


78 Card Pick-Up

by bazooka



Series: 78 Card Pick-Up [1]
Category: Sungkyunkwan Scandal
Genre: Crossdressing, M/M, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2018-02-09 15:12:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 38,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1987575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bazooka/pseuds/bazooka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of situations (some more humorous than others) spanning a four month period, illustrating the gradual, inexorable degradation of Moon Jae Shin's heterosexuality. </p><p>These include: Moon Jae Shin's very first visit to Moran-gak; Gu Yong Ha's very first camping experience; an escapade in which Gu Yong Ha very nearly falls off of a roof; a trip to the beach wherein Moon Jae Shin has to hang off the side of a building in the rain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is set following the end of the main storyline of SKKS but about a year before the epilogue.
> 
> When romanizing Hangeul I typically prefer Revised Romanization, but for the character's names I decided to stick with the romanized versions used in the DramaFever subs, as I figured that they're what most of the possible readers of this might be familiar with.
> 
> The title is inspired by 52 Card Pick-Up except a typical Tarot deck has 78 cards ha ha get it. (Ugh, I'm the worst.) I actually don't know very much about Tarot, so if you do... I'm sorry! I'm really just using it as a plot device, and possibly (probably) quite poorly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey so here's a mind-bogglingly cool thing: stinabong made a graphic set for this chapter??? IT'S GREAT? So you should look at it, that's all.  
> http://remyfirefly.tumblr.com/post/93452030283/78-pick-up-by-bazooka-yong-ha-picked-up-the-first

"I should become a fortune teller."

It was very, very early in the morning; only a barely noticeable lightness on the horizon betrayed the coming of the sun. No birds were awake. Even in the darkness, with hours for the air to cool, the night weighed heavily on the low, brightly decorated buildings of Hanyang's mercantile district. The heat was beyond oppressive.

The room couldn't exactly be called small, per se; cozy, perhaps, or maybe simply private. The tight quarters were still enough space for a few piles of floor pillows, a low table big enough for four people to sit comfortably, and for Moon Jae Shin to stretch his full length out on the floor without concern for propriety or comfort.

"That's stupid."

Gu Yong Ha wrinkled his nose thoughtfully. "You have to admit, I could make a lot of money."

"But could you make the predictions." The words were mumbled, muffled, and certainly not phrased as a question. Yong Ha didn't need to be able to see his friend's face to know that Jae Shin's eyes were closed, his jaw slack - which was fortuitous, since Geol Oh's upper half had somehow ended up under the table.

Yong Ha brought a small bowl of soju to his lips with an unsteady hand. They had been drinking since only just after sunset and for once he had managed to be the one to literally drink his opponent under the table. "Look who's being stupid now," he said, his tongue embarrassingly large and cumbersome against his teeth. If only his tongue weren't so big - he could speak faster and not slur quite so much. "Hey. Hey! I'm Gu Yong Ha. Why make predictions when I can make my own reality?"

Silence from under the table.

Yong Ha listed gently to one side as he blurrily considered looking under the edge of the table, seeing if Jae Shin was even still awake - but the room tilted dangerously and he dragged himself back upright, clinging to the soju bottle like a drowning man to a drifting log. He satisfied himself with simply kicking out with one of his bare feet (where had his stockings gone?) until he connected with something solid. His reward was a grunt, and a sudden shifting of what he could see of Jae Shin's lower body.

"Making your own reality seems like a lot of responsibility," came the grumbled reply. "Don't kick me. I'll bite your leg off."

"Don't bite people's legs off," Yong Ha replied absent-mindedly, reserving what remained of his concentration for studying the emptiness of his cup. "It'll become a habit."

"No it won't. You've only got two."

"So just think what you'd bite next. Perish the thought."

The sudden thunk of a thick Soron skull hitting teak rattled the table, nearly overturning several small banchan dishes and dislodging an embarrassingly large number of empty soju bottles. A moment of exceptionally busy quiet as Yong Ha attempted to right the contents of the table, then a high pitched hissing noise from somewhere by his feet.

"If you opened your eyes," Yong Ha mumbled, "you might avoid hitting your head on things when you sat up."

"Who put this table here?" came Jae Shin's voice from below, uncharacteristically whiny.

"You did." Yong Ha considered pouring himself another glass of soju, paused, thought for a moment, then picked up both bottle and cup to pour in the air. "Idiot."

The table rocked, Jae Shin's legs flailed, and finally, after several strained minutes, Yong Ha's crazy-haired friend found himself mostly upright on the opposite side of the table. Yong Ha, for his part, clutched the last mostly-full soju bottle and felt exceedingly pleased with himself for accurately predicting the path of Tropical Storm Geol Oh. 

"So about my fortune telling business," Yong Ha said, setting his cup down and rooting through the wreckage for a second empty glass. When no glass seemed forthcoming he settled on a small dish of mostly eaten green onion pancake; peered at it closely, shrugged, then tossed the remaining banchan back into his mouth before setting the dish in front of Jae Shin and sloshing a large portion of soju into it. Jae Shin squinted at it blearily.

"Housewives and young noblewomen badgering you to change their lover's heart, " Jae Shin said, and knocked back the dish of soju in one giant shot. "I didn't realize you were so easily entertained."

"Don't be stupid, I'd do more than that," Yong Ha protested. "I have a deck of Western divination cards. I'll show you. Tell you your fortune. Yes?"

Geol Oh looked up at him and made eye contact from under an unimpressed brow. Yong Ha's gleeful expression wilted only slightly under the force of Jae Shin's megawatt glare, a testament to his fortitude. "I'll read your love fortune." A curling, cat-like grin. A wink. A few quick movements and the table was cleared. He spirited the aforementioned pack of cards from a fold in his voluminous robes and splayed them out in a semi-circle on the surface of the table. "Pick five."

He had expected Jae Shin to refuse. Protest, at least. Almost certainly say something sharp and then lie back down on the floor in silence. He didn't expect his old friend (this old friend) to silently, obediently pick out five random cards and present them to him, in a way that could almost be shy in any other man.

Suddenly he felt much more sober than he felt he had any right to be.

"All right," he said. The blank back of the first card stared up at him accusingly. "All right."

"My love fortune," Jae Shin said in a low voice. His expression looked serious for a moment, but then it cracked into a grin as he glanced away, breaking eye contact.

Yong Ha steeled himself. This was a trap of his own making: fun had been the bait, Jae Shin's inevitable teasing was now the teeth. The only thing for it was to see it through.

"The first card," he whispered dramatically, running his fingers quickly over the cards, "represents your fated lover." He moved to flip it over but paused, glancing up at his friend from under the wide brim of his hat. "Are you ready?"

"Never," Geol Oh replied, arching one eyebrow.

Yong Ha stuck his tongue out at him and flipped the card over without decorum. After a moment Jae Shin leaned over the table to look closer at the card. "What is it?" he said finally.

Yong Ha picked it up and peered closely at it. "It's... a queen? Queen of staves."

"My fated lover is a queen." Jae Shin seemed to ponder this for a moment, swaying slightly. "Does the king know?"

Yong Ha grimaced and slapped the card down. "It's not meant to be taken literally, idiot. It has to be interpreted. The queen of staves..." It would help if he could remember what the little instruction booklet had said. "... a strong-hearted person. Well-read. Charismatic."

"A gisaeng," Jae Shin said sleepily, his eyes closed again already. He rested his jaw on his fist and slowly, gradually, inexorably began slumping back down to the floor.

"We have known strong-hearted women who aren't listed on the gisaeng registry," Yong Ha said in a level voice. "You may recall."

Jae Shin opened his eyes again, barely, keeping his gaze on the cards. Yong Ha bit his tongue. Too soon? They had attended Lee Seon Joon and Kim Yoon Hee's engagement the day before and Yong Ha had rented out the private room above the inn, ostensibly to celebrate. Yong Ha alone knew that it had been for Geol Oh to drink as much as he needed in relative peace. 

The scruffy asshole had laid on the floor crooning sad songs to himself for only a few hours. Yong Ha counted that as a success.

"What's next?" Jae Shin said finally. Yong Ha let out a slow exhale.

"The next three cards represent your meeting," he said, flipping them over one by one as he spoke. The watercolor images seemed to glow in the dimly lit room.

"I can't read English," Jae Shin said after a moment. "But those don't look good."

"Yes, yes, have a little faith," Yong Ha replied, waving a hand dismissively. He moved a hand to the first card, pushing it toward Jae Shin. "This card represents what you lack, what needs to take place before you can meet your fated lover." The second card, pushed slightly across the table. "This card represents your readiness, what you'll be at the fateful moment. What you should be looking for." He touched the third card. "This card represents the revelation, the moment that everything becomes clear."

Geol Oh didn't say anything, but he did purse his lips in that way he did whenever he was making a conscious decision to tolerate bullshit.

Yong Ha picked up the first card, delicately, between thumb and middle finger. "This card is called Death."

Jae Shin jerked back from the cards. "This was a bad idea."

"I told you, they can't be taken literally. They have to be interpreted. All right?" Yong Ha coughed. "The Death card represents an ending. Moving on. You need to let go of whatever ideas or dreams you've been holding onto before you can be ready to meet your fated lover." He paused. "You know, I could have just told you that. I think I have told you that. I think I told you that a few hours ago."

"And you haven't shut up since," Jae Shin growled.

"You love it. All right, next -" the card took a little work to pick up, as it had become stuck fast to the table's surface "- the Hanged Man."

Jae Shin's mouth worked a bit as he leaned back in over the table to study the watercolor face of the card. "Why is he hanging upside down?"

His friend shrugged. "Westerners are weird. Let me see that."

Geol Oh pushed the card back across the table and took the opportunity to poke around for an unemptied bottle.

"You'll be in limbo," Yong Ha said. "You'll both be in limbo."

Jae Shin paused, his fist around the neck of a bottle. He gave Yong Ha a narrow-eyed, doubtful look. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means..." Yeorim rubbed the bridge of his nose. "This card represents a state of waiting. You've moved on from where you were, and now you're waiting for the revelation."

"So the start of every marriage since the beginning of time," Geol Oh replied. He picked up the bottle, refilled his little banchan dish, and drank thoughtfully. "This soju kind of tastes like green onion. Did you notice that?"

Yong Ha glared down at the card, willing it to be something other than it was. Why had he thought this would be a good idea? "The Hanged Man also represents an old friend."

Jae Shin spit a mouthful of soju back into the dish. "What?"

"It doesn't have to mean anything, but it could be interpreted to mean that you already know her," Yeorim said quickly. "Your queen of staves."

"I don't know if you've noticed," Jae Shin growled, tossing back the remaining soju and reaching again for the bottle, "but I don't exactly know many women. Available women, anyway."

Yong Ha's hand shot out and settled over his friend's hand, holding the bottle down on the table. "Stop getting drunk while I'm telling your fortune," he chided. "It makes me feel unappreciated. And anyway, it doesn't have to be an old friend - maybe just someone you've seen before, or a name that's been mentioned in your presence. Just not someone entirely new."

Jae Shin seemed to settle, but still tugged half-heartedly at the bottle. "Great. That's great."

Yeorim set his jaw. "Can I get to the next card or are you going to keep being difficult?"

They locked eyes, and this time it was Geol Oh's turn to look away under the force of the other's glare. He dropped his hand from the bottle. "Finish it up, then."

Yeorim grinned. "That's right," he chirped. "The fourth card is the Tower. It represents a sudden change in what you thought was true. Up is down, left is right. After you meet your lover your perspective will be challenged and changed in order for your love to survive."

"So?"

"So maybe you'll find that not all women are terrifying," Yeorim said shortly. "I don't know."

Geol Oh arched an eyebrow. "Aren't you supposed to be the fortune teller?"

"Fortune teller, yes. Miracle worker, no."

Jae Shin scratched the line of his jaw thoughtfully. "So according to the cards, I'm going to... to let go of something. Then I'm going to wait around for while until I meet someone I already know. Then in order for any of this to work I'm going to have to challenge everything I know to be true. Yeah?"

Yong Ha grimaced at the cards. "Basically," he admitted, after a moment. "But there's still one more card!" he added quickly, as Geol Oh rolled his eyes and moved as if to stand up from the table.

He groaned and settled back down again. "One more card," he said. Held up a finger. "One." Yong Ha grinned wide and flipped over the card.

"The Magician," Jae Shin said.

"What?"

Jae Shin reached across the table and tapped the card. "I know this one. It's the Magician." He glanced up at Yong Ha, a quirk at the corner of his mouth.

Yong Ha gaped for a second before regaining his composure. "How do you know that?"

Geol Oh shrugged and lay down on the floor, hands behind his head. "I know things sometimes. What is it supposed to mean?"

"It's..." Yong Ha looked down at the card. "The last card is the blossoming. How the love starts."

"It starts by being spoken? This is a stupid fortune."

"Hey! Where did you learn all this?" Yong Ha banged on the table with an open palm, trying to get his friend to at least open his eyes. "It took me over a year to get this deck of cards. How do you know so much?" Silence. "Geol Oh?" Yong Ha grimaced and got up on his knees to peer over the opposite edge of the table. Jae Shin was unmistakably asleep, his lips parted and his breathing deep. Yong Ha settled back onto his floor pillow with a sigh, and gathered up the cards.

It had been a distraction, at least. Yong Ha was hard pressed to keep Jae Shin from going dark these days - not a slow burning black fury like before, when they were still looking for the Geum Deung Ji Sa, but a simple absence of light. A house with no one home. The kid had gone from fire to ice in the span of a year. Maybe he was just seeing things. Maybe no one else noticed because there was nothing to notice at all. Yong Ha grimaced, shuffling the cards absent-mindedly. But if there was anything to it he'd be the one, right? He'd be the one to see it.

He smiled to himself. Licked his lips. Spread the cards out on the table in one quick, smooth motion. 

Picked five.


	2. Queen of Staves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you liked the graphic set from chapter 1, here's one for chapter 2 as well! Even if you didn't like it there's still one for chapter 2. But if you didn't like it you're wrong.  
> http://remyfirefly.tumblr.com/post/93726715703/78-pick-up-by-bazooka-he-set-his-cup-down-on-the

The sun was low in the sky, arcing light low and harsh through the streets. The sunsets were finally getting earlier, the days cooler. It was getting close to that perfect in-between season where an unadorned hanbok was neither too much nor too little clothing.

Dark blue jacket. White baji. Light blue silk overcoat. Manggeon, gat, even shoes in place of boots. Wearing more intricate layers than he was accustomed to, Moon Jae Shin simultaneously felt both over-dressed and over-exposed. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and tugged irritably at the gat strap tied under his chin. It was both too tight and too loose at the same time - digging into his throat and yet still threatening to fall off with the smallest movements.

The arching gateway in front of him, perpetually open and inviting, seemed more like a mouth than a door. His pulse quickened. He felt like a prey animal.

He'd mused before (somewhere on a rooftop, probably with an arrow sticking out of him) that when faced with certain danger the world seems to slow down. The air shimmers. Everything becomes brighter, sounds become louder, even the sharpest sword becomes more curiosity than concern. Moon Jae Shin was positive that this counted as certain danger, but somehow his body didn't agree. The world remained the same speed. There was no shimmer in the air. Everything was still scary and he did not (did not.) feel calm.

He swallowed. Twitched his overcoat. Scuffed his feet. Tried to think of any other commitment he may have forgotten that could deliver him from his dark fate, but came up woefully short. Finally, neuroses temporarily satisfied, Moon Jae Shin stepped over the threshold of Moran-gak.

**-**  
 **One Month Previous**  
 **-**

There's a lot to be said for nimbleness. If you're small but quick, weak but sure-footed, there isn't a lot of trouble you can't weasel your way out of.

Of course at midnight (even midnight in the bustling capital city of Hanyang) there isn't much to avoid. Not many people are about, and those who are are either loud (drunks), brightly dressed (rich drunks), or those who keep to the sidelines by force of habit (probably not drunk). So if you're confident, sure of yourself, so familiar with these streets that you could walk them blindfolded... then you might just run headlong into the scariest yangban son in Joseon.

The kid might have managed to dodge his way to an escape if one big, rough-skinned hand hadn't clamped down onto the top of his head, keeping him from moving from the spot.

Moon Jae Shin dropped down into a squat, one knee on the ground, the other supporting a forearm, and peered curiously into the boy's pale, large-eyed face. "You can't be more than nine," he said mildly. "Why aren't you at home in bed?" The kid swallowed nervously and muttered something almost unintelligible. Jae Shin cocked his head to one side. "Don't mumble. Where do you live?"

"Moran-gak," the kid said, louder this time. Maybe he wouldn't get out of trouble tonight. Maybe he just had to make peace with that.

"Ah," Jae Shin said. He released his hold on the boy's head and sat back on his heels. "A runner, then. So tell me, who's too drunk to walk home tonight?"

"Gu Yong Ha," the kid replied, and immediately bit his tongue. "But it's not... he..."

Jae Shin's eyebrows drew together. "Gu Yong Ha?" Then he laughed suddenly, making the kid nearly jump out of his skin. "Stupid bastard." He stood, reaching into a pocket to draw out a few small coins. "Go home and go to bed. You're too young to be running around in the middle of the night."

"But I'm supposed to-"

"I'll get him," Jae Shin interrupted, dropping the coins into the boy's small hand. "Go home, I said."

A few seconds later it was like the kid had never been on the street at all. Moon Jae Shin rubbed a thumb over his lower lip and started down the street in the direction the boy had disappeared. His first thought was that it wasn't like Gu Yong Ha to drink, but that wasn't quite right, was it? It wasn't like Gu Yong Ha to drink so much, more like. Even sloshed out of his head Yeorim could still get home without incident, probably while spinning.

Who knew how many times Gu Yong Ha had dragged his sorry ass home after a few (dozen) too many? Of course it wasn't a question of whether Yong Ha deserved to have the favor returned - just why he needed it at all. Jae Shin, for his part, usually drank too much when he felt like shit. Gu Yong Ha drank when he felt like it, when there was something fun going on, when it was in front of him... but not too much. Never too much. He always knew when to stop. Or always got distracted, anyway.

Moon Jae Shin rounded a corner and found himself in front of Moran-gak.

It was a deceptively tall building, disguised as something much smaller than it was by the low stone walls covered in vines. He'd done his damnedest to avoid ever stepping inside that gate, but that resolution might be broken tonight. Maybe he could just... throw a rock, get somebody's attention...? See if they could go in for him? Peel his best friend off the floor of some gisaeng's private parlor?

He swallowed apprehensively, willed his diaphragm not to spasm, and took a step toward the gate at the exact same moment that Gu Yong Ha spilled out of it like a silk handkerchief poured from a bowl. He hit the packed dirt of the street with an upsettingly meaty thud, his robes flaring and settling around him, and then didn't move.

Moon Jae Shin started. Gaped. Quickly, surreptitiously glanced side to side as if to make sure this wasn't some kind of Yeorim prank. Returned to his senses, then bolted for his friend's motionless form. Knelt next to him... and very very gingerly prodded him in the ribs.

"Hey," he hissed awkwardly. "Hey. Are you awake?" No response. Jae Shin chewed the inside of his cheek, feeling stupid, then tried prodding Yong Ha again, rougher this time. "You're messing up your robe. It's the blue one."

Still no response. Jae Shin sighed and scratched his head. He must have really been unconscious. No way a responsive Gu Yong Ha could let a comment like "it's the blue one" go by without a fight: Jae Shin knew for a fact that Yong Ha had at least eight jackets and nine overcoats that could all be described as "the blue one."

Jae Shin grimaced. "Shit." It took some doing and some minimal removal of clothing (no gat brim was going to slice open his jugular tonight if he could help it) but eventually Yong Ha ended up on his back, arms around his neck, tensionless legs strung through his arms. It could have been a lot harder, Jae Shin mused, if Yong Ha weren't basically a bundle of kindling wrapped up in a multi-colored silk sheet.

"Ah, Geol Oh," came Gu Yong Ha's sighing voice next to his ear. "You're so nice."

"I thought you were asleep," Jae Shin replied, adjusting his hold as he walked so that Yong Ha's mouth wasn't smashed quite so close against the side of his neck. "What got into you tonight?"

"A game," Yong Ha slurred back, then giggled drunkenly. "I lost."

Jae Shin glanced at his friend doubtfully out of the corner of his eye. "You? Lose a game?"

"I know!" Yeorim whined. "You.... you would have won. No problem." He seemed to think very hard about this for a moment. "Should've had you do it."

"What game?" A sudden thought pushed a laugh out of him. "No. A drinking game?"

Yong Ha's hand came up so quickly and suddenly that Jae Shin couldn't avoid being slapped hard in the face. "Don't," Yong Ha hissed in his ear, "don't ever. Ever. Try to outdrink a gisaeng."

Jae Shin strained against Yong Ha's hand, trying to squeak even half an inch of space between him and his friend's lips. "Get your finger out of my eye."

Yong Ha slumped again as if on cue, the crown of his head hitting Jae Shin hard right behind the ear. "You have to help me," he moaned, his words slurred and muffled by Jae Shin's shoulder.

Jae Shin was busy trying to keep his balance (one stinging eye closed), but made an attempt at being responsive anyway. "With what?"

"You have to," Yong Ha mumbled.

"Yeah, yeah," Jae Shin replied, adjusting his friend's weight on his back. "With what?"

"Promise." Quieter this time. Sleepier.

"Fine. I promise. Will you at least tell me what I'm helping with?" Silence. "Gu Yong Ha?" Jae Shin contorted, trying to see his friend's face. He didn't need to; Yong Ha started snoring after a few seconds, the kind of snoring only heard from the very, very sick and the very, very drunk.

Jae Shin stared for a moment before quietly barking a laugh to himself. Who knew what he'd just promised to do? He knew, with rock hard certainty, that he would live to regret this.

**-**  
 **One Month Later**  
 **-**

He was regretting it.

The low table was set sparsely, beautifully, every piece of porcelain a masterpiece, every cup placed precisely. His first assumption was that the white tea pot held tea (right?) but was somehow both relieved and alarmed when his cup was filled with what turned out to be hot soju. One, two, three cups of that and he might somehow live through the evening.

The lion's share of Moon Jae Shin's energy was focused on thinking of the crowding, whispering gisaeng as simply birds. Maybe furniture. Certainly not women, and certainly not a lot of them. Certainly, certainly, certainly not all sitting as close to him as possible without actually coming into contact.

One of the gisaeng to his left sweetly took the cup from his hand, her fingers brushing over his. Damn. Damn. Damn.

He hiccuped, and what felt like all of the blood in his body rushed to his face. "Thank you," he stuttered, roughly grabbing back the now full cup in an attempt to keep physical contact at a minimum.

She tucked her head down in an elegant little bow, the ornaments pinned into the ropes of her hair swinging with the movement. "You must forgive us," she murmured. Damn. Damn. Even her voice was cute. "We haven't had the pleasure of your company before today, my lord. The girls are very curious. What brings you to us here? Now?"

"Ssss," he managed, then gave up and downed his fresh cup of hot soju with the desperation of a dying man. "S-sang. Sang Jun Lim."

The chatter faded into quiet as the gisaeng who had refilled his cup arched her eyebrows higher and higher. "Sang Jun Lim," she repeated. "You're here for Sang Jun Lim. You? For Sang Jun Lim?" Her careful mask of serenity broke, and she peered suspiciously into his face. (Jae Shin pulled away sharply, hiccupped, and hated himself intensely.) "You really don't seem to be the type. My lord," she added quickly, pulling her chin back and dropping her eyes, remembering herself.

"I made a promise," he mumbled into the cup, wishing it was full again but too nervous to set it down.

The two gisaeng on either side of him looked at each other and held what appeared to be a silent conversation, using a language entirely made up of eyebrow movements and lip twitches. Jae Shin looked back and forth between them anxiously, regretting dearly (for what may have been the first time in his life) that he had removed his gat and left it at the door. Even such a thin, see through barrier was still a barrier.

The conversation ended as quickly as it began, and the gisaeng on his right turned on him in a way that could have almost been predatory if her smile hadn't been so pointedly sweet. "My lord," she said, her voice caught halfway between irritation and hilarity, "please allow me to guide you to Sang Jun Lim's parlor." The gisaeng inclined slowly into a bow, taking her time. (The line of her neck caught Jae Shin's eyes like a fish, dragging his mind down with them.)

There was a corridor to venture through, lit thoroughly but not brightly. A staircase at the end, curving up and around until it spat them out on the second floor, going back in the same direction that they had come. Jae Shin made a concerted, constant effort to ignore the gentle swishing sound of the gisaeng's chima against the floor. The slight jingling noises of the ornaments in her hair. The scent of her perfume.

"My lord," she murmured, and suddenly she was facing him, one hand placed lightly on the door frame next to her. Jae Shin blinked; he had been so intent on ignoring her that he'd almost knocked her over. "The private parlor of Sang Jun Lim."

The door slid open. Jae Shin swallowed, and cast a fearful look through the opening.

Oh well. Once more into the breach.

He slid the door closed behind him. The small room was lit with a veritable flock of paper lanterns, each more brightly colored than the last - hanging from the ceiling, sitting on furniture, even large ones in the corners of the room. A painted screen depicting young women bathing in a pond covered the back wall of the room. Pink and purple floor pillows were heaped elegantly on two sides of the low table, which had been set with small plates of sweet things, a tea pot, two tea cups.

And next to the table, hands clasped delicately, sat Sang Jun Lim. Gold, orange, cream hanbok, see-through jeogeori exposing pale thin shoulders. Jet black hair elegantly twisted into braids. Long white neck. Thin wrists. Face turned away from the door, chin tucked shyly against a shoulder.

Somewhere deep in Moon Jae Shin's gut, something twisted into a knot.

Sang Jun Lim turned slowly to look at him from under long, dark lashes. "I was starting to think you'd break your promise."

"You don't know me very well," Jae Shin managed, and flopped down next to the table awkwardly. His clothes suddenly seemed very constricting.

"Don't be absurd," Sang Jun Lim said. "Sometimes I think I know you better than you know yourself, my lord."

No. No. No, this was too much. "You," Jae Shin growled, pointing a finger right at the gisaeng's face, "are an evil bastard, Gu Yong Ha."

Sang Jun Lim's perfectly made up face cracked into a wide grin, and Gu Yong Ha winked from the other side of it. "And yet still you come when I call."

**-**  
 **One Week Previous**  
 **-**

"Wait. Go back. You did what?"

Gu Yong Ha smiled crookedly against the rim of his cup and shot Moon Jae Shin a hesitant look from under the brim of his gat, before coughing clumsily and setting the cup down on the table between them. "Not one of my better moments," he said contritely, wiping a nearly invisible drop of soju from his lower lip with his thumb.

The sun was setting directly behind Moon Jae Shin, shining a halo in his unkempt hair and casting his already indecipherable face into shadow. Was that a glare? A look of fury? Amusement? Confusion? Of course, maybe he was just tipsy enough to make this work. "That's not an answer," he growled, but the careful way he picked up the bottle and refilled Gu Yong Ha's cup betrayed something other than exasperation in his mood. He pushed the now-full cup across the rough wood of the table, and nodded expectantly. "If you don't at least tell me what I promised to do, I'm going to leave."

Yong Ha's hand flew to his mouth in a facsimile of horror. "What? And leave me to drink all of this?" He curled his fingers into his palm and winked coquettishly. "Waste not, want not, I suppose. And it's not like I've never drunk this much before..." He reached a hand slowly toward the neck of the soju bottle between them, eyes locked on Jae Shin's face.

Jae Shin got there first, like Yong Ha knew he would, laying a hand on his own and forcing it to the table. "Stop that," Jae Shin said, quickly moving the soju bottle out of Yong Ha's reach with his free hand. "I'm never carrying you home again. And I mean it - I'm going to leave." He paused, then smirked lazily, glancing up at Yong Ha with heavy-lidded eyes. "And I'll take the soju with me."

"Asshole," Yong Ha grumbled, making a fruitless attempt to tug his hand out from under Jae Shin's bigger, stronger one. "That soju is expensive. You're just going to steal from me? Me, your decade-old friend?" He pouted and gave up on getting his hand back, slumping down to rest his weight on an elbow. He tried giving Jae Shin a studiously innocent look but decided very quickly against it, instead clearing his throat and stiffening self-consciously. "All right, all right, I get it. If I promise to tell you can I please have my hand back?"

Jae Shin's mouth twitched, one corner twisting upward, and he leaned forward just enough to put an almost painful amount of pressure on Yong Ha's hand. "How about you tell me, and _then_ I give you your hand back."

Asshole. Jerk. Idiot. Yong Ha waved his free hand in a placating gesture. "Okay. Okay! I get it, I said." He grimaced down at his trapped wrist as if it had insulted his mother. "If you're already kind of drunk, a lot of really bad ideas start to sound like really good ideas. Like starting a drinking contest with a gisaeng, for example," he added, raising his soju cup for emphasis and downing its contents for strength. "Look at me! I'm delicate. I think can hold my drink, but that gisaeng..." Yong Ha shook his head and hissed through his teeth. "She could put even you to shame, Geol Oh."

"I'm not hearing the part where you need my help," Jae Shin said mildly, grabbing the soju bottle by the neck and drinking directly from it.

Yong Ha made a face. "Come on. That's rude."

"Talk."

He set his cup down on the table and pushed it toward Jae Shin. "The bet was that whoever lost had to do whatever the winner decided."

Jae Shin sighed and stared down at Yong Ha's empty cup. "And you lost."

"And I lost."

"So what is it," Jae Shin said, slowly picking up the bottle and pouring Yong Ha another glass, "that a gisaeng would ask of you?"

Yong Ha picked up his cup gingerly and raised it to his lips. "See, about that..."

**-**  
 **The Present**  
 **-**

Moon Jae Shin was caught in the middle of a raging internal war over what, exactly, the worst thing was about his situation.

First off, he had had to dress up - not just put on clean clothes and make sure to wear boots, no - actual real fine clothes. He'd had to "borrow" one of his father's gat, not to mention a manggeon. None of the nice clothing he did own fit him any more, having not even pulled it out in four years, so he'd had to go to the tailor and stand on a box and have an old man with one leg shorter than the other poke him and prod him in all manner of uncomfortable places and then (and then!) if that hadn't been punishment enough already, he had had to actually put on the clothes. And wear them. On the street. Like some kind of over-inflated Noron piece of shit.

(No offense intended, Lee Seon Joon. But have you seen yourself?)

Second, he had entered Moran-gak. He had probably been seen entering Moran-gak. Somehow, somewhere, someone was talking to his father about this. Maybe someone was talking to Kim Yoon Hee. Maybe all the people who he had ever judged for frequenting Moran-gak were now whispering about him behind their hands. Not only that, but he also had to deal with actually being inside Moran-gak, which was, notoriously, filled with women. (He had had nightmares like this.)

But jockeying for first place, with perhaps the most convincing argument, was Gu Yong Ha's complete and utter inability to play the gayageum with anything resembling skill.

"Please just stop," Jae Shin managed to choke out, reaching out and laying a hand over the strings of the zither.

Yong Ha looked up at him, his face stuck in the most transparently false expression of innocence he'd ever worn. "What? Aren't you entertained?" He hesitated, his eyes flickering. "Am... am I not pleasing to you, my lord?"

Jae Shin clenched his jaw. Unclenched, then clenched again. Drew a hand over his face. "How long do I have to stay?"

"At least two hours," Yong Ha replied promptly, shoving the gayageum indelicately into the corner behind him. "They said if I could entertain a guest for two hours my debt would be paid." He fluffed his wide, poofy skirts around him. Placed a hand on one of the thick black braids of his gisaeng's wig. "You don't realize how heavy these are until you have to wear them. It's really ridiculous." He sighed, moving his head slowly, shakily, from side to side, testing his balance. "Like wearing a gat full of rocks."

"I'll take your word for it," Jae Shin mumbled, staring fixedly at the table.

Yong Ha peered at him, twisting his painted mouth in thought. "So are you ready for the civil service exam?" he asked after a few moments. "I think I might look for a posting in the Capital Bureau. What about you?"

"Ah." Geol Oh glanced up. "Capital Bureau. Investigation division."

"Good fit for you." Yong Ha leaned over the table and picked up the tea pot gently with both hands. Jae Shin couldn't help but notice how closely the white porcelain matched his skin. "A lot of running about on rooftops in that division, do you think?" He poured two cups and set the pot back down, then looked up at Jae Shin with a slight, curving smile on his lips. "Maybe you're getting too old for that sort of thing, though. I can't say I've noticed much rooftop activity in the last few months."

Jae Shin inclined his head slightly, a quick nodding bow of thanks, and picked up the steaming tea cup. (He smelled it first, just in case, but this one was definitely just tea.) "I don't really... have anything to say," he mumbled, unable to keep eye contact. Something about the combination of Gu Yong Ha, full skirts, and a golden see-through jeogeori (showing the white band of fabric wrapped tight around the thin boy's chest) made him feel more nervous than he liked to think too much about.

"Since when has Geol Oh had nothing to say?" Yong Ha grinned at him wolfishly, but the smile faded at the look on Jae Shin's face. "Hey. Are you all right?"

Jae Shin coughed and set his tea cup down quickly. "Of course I'm fine," he stuttered. "It's... it's just hot in here. Isn't it hot in here? Aren't you hot?" His hand went to his forehead as if to wipe away sweat, but he shoved the manggeon off his brow instead, pulling it away in his palm. He glared at it as if it had personally offended him. "I can't stand this thing."

"That's one thing about dressing up as a woman," Yong Ha said, smiling prettily and brushing at his hairline with his fingertips. "No manggeon. Way too much hair though," he conceded, patting one of his braids again. "It is pretty hot in here." He tugged at the lower hem of his see-through jeogeori, one hand going for the ties. "Hey, we've gone swimming together, right? You won't mind if I-"

"I mind!" Jae Shin said quickly, almost shouting, shooting his hand out to catch Yong Ha's wrist before he could reach the ties of the translucent jacket. (Both tea cups went over and the tea pot lost its lid somewhere under the table. It would take the whole of Moran-gak's residents nearly a week to find it again.)

Time froze like that for a moment. Jae Shin felt as if the air were shimmering around him. Everything became brighter. Sounds became louder. Yong Ha's thin wrist in his palm was the only real thing in the world, the look of surprise on his face the only thing Jae Shin could focus on.

Oh. Right. This was what certain danger had felt like. It had been such a long time, he was no longer sure that his memories were accurate.

"I have to go," he stammered, dropping Yong Ha's wrist as if it were a venomous snake and shooting to his feet, nearly banging his head on a hanging paper lantern in the process. "I need to... there's..."

"If you don't stay for at least two hours I have to do this again tomorrow," Yong Ha yelped, standing up with him, skirts scooped up in his arms. "You might be bored but I'm the one wearing the damn thing! Have a little pity, will you?" He tucked the hem of his jeogeori, pulling it tighter over his chest. "It's annoying to wear, but putting everything on is torture. You think a top knot is bad? Try knots all over your head, holding up twenty pounds of fake hair! And the fabric itches, and you're both too cold and too hot at the same time, and the makeup!" Yong Ha's cheeks burned with impotent fury, and Jae Shin cowered. "The makeup! I never realized! This took over an hour!"

Hands up, palms out defensively, Jae Shin slowly sat back down. "Two hours," he said, his throat dry. "All right. I can do that."

Yong Ha huffed and flopped back down onto the floor pillows, knees and elbows sticking out every which way. "I don't care what you do as long as you stay in this room for at least two hours."

"The least you could've done is served soju," Jae Shin said, gingerly locating and righting both tea cups. He poked around for the lid to the tea pot but eventually gave up and just poured the tea as carefully as he could.

"Recent experiences have impressed upon me the importance of practicing moderation," Yong Ha snapped, taking a cup from Jae Shin's extended hand. Their fingers brushed against each other, and Jae Shin didn't jerk his hand away - just tried not to stare.

Yong Ha took a slow sip, closed his eyes, took a deep breath. Regarded his friend curiously. "Does this mean you've found something else to keep you alive?"

Jae Shin froze, tea cup halfway to his lips. "What?"

"The Red Messenger," Yong Ha said mildly. Licked his lips. Set the tea cup down on the table. "You used to say that you can't live if you're not doing something. That you couldn't bear the frustration." His eyes flickered, and he glanced up at Jae Shin's face in a way that was almost embarrassed. "Did you find something else?"

Somewhere else in Moran-gak, in another room farther down the corridor, someone laughed. It was the only sound in the sudden quiet. Jae Shin stared; jaw slack, lips slightly parted, head suddenly empty. Gu Yong Ha looked down at his hands, and Moon Jae Shin knew exactly what the worst thing was about his situation. It wasn't having to dress up. It wasn't breaking his resolution never to enter Moran-gak. It wasn't embarrassment, or discomfort, or even the irritation of Yong Ha's exceptionally lacking musical talent.

He extended a shaking hand, setting his tea cup down on the lacquered surface of the table, then reached out and touched Yong Ha lightly on the wrist. The slim boy looked at him curiously: first at his hand, then up into his eyes. "I can take anything," Jae Shin said slowly, his voice much more hoarse than he would ever admit later. "But please. Never, ever dress in women's clothing again."

**-**  
 **Two Months Previous**  
 **-**

The sun had crept up over the horizon and the birds and insects were out in full force. Yong Ha was impressed that Jae Shin managed to sleep through it - although maybe he was just too drunk to wake up. The divination cards were splayed out on the table in front of him, and the five he had picked were lined up like fish at the market. Yong Ha looked down at them for a moment, chewing his lower lip, before flipping the first card over.

"Knight of Cups," he said. There was no one awake to hear him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sang Jun Lim is the name of a real gisaeng in Seoul from about 250 years before the events of Sungkyunkwan Scandal. She's noted as being "associated with many scholars."
> 
> Just my idea of a joke.


	3. Death

"So, then," Kim Yoon Hee said mildly, bringing the tea cup to her mouth. "I hear that you paid a visit to Moran-gak the other day."

Moon Jae Shin went white and immediately spilled hot tea down the front of his robe. "I don't want to talk about it."

Yoon Hee blinked at the steam coming off her friend and tched through her teeth. She pulled a folded silk handkerchief out of her sleeve and handed it over the table to him. "I suppose Gu Yong Ha wasn't involved at all?" she said, watching him awkwardly smear tea all over himself.

"I really don't want to talk about it," Jae Shin said again, a strain in his voice as he scrubbed at the splashes of tea on his clothing. This. This was exactly why he wore grey.

"Although I'm curious to know why no one reports having seen him with you," Yoon Hee mused, pointedly ignoring his protests. She took another sip of tea and fixed him with a look.

"It's hard to explain," Jae Shin mumbled, tentatively placing the now-crumpled handkerchief on the tea table between them.

"I imagine so," Yoon Hee said happily, setting her tea cup down and picking up the pot to fill her friend's cup. "Lucky for us we have so much time."


	4. The Hanged Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jung Yak Jong was actually for real the head architect for Hwaseong Fortress. Thank you, Wikipedia.

Gu Yong Ha was sixteen kinds of miserable.

After taking on a top-secret mission to uncover the Geum Deung Ji Sa and bring about political revolution on behalf of the king, he had (mistakenly) assumed that that would be the beginning and end of his national duty. But no. No, it turned out that once the king had acquired your services for one secret mission, he owned you, body and soul.

Oh, he'd act like it was optional of course, flattering you and making sure you understood that you had a choice in the matter, but with the prime minister staring you down to your left and your Soron best friend standing starstruck and vibrating with excitement to your right, you didn't really have any other options. When given the choice between a few days of misery and the destruction of any possibility of a successful political career (not to mention a twelve year old friendship) the decision was obvious.

That's why he was now stuck in the cold. In the dim light of nearly-sunset. Miles from home, on the most irritable horse he'd ever had the misfortune of riding.

His head hurt. His back hurt. His lower back hurt. He hurt in places too uncomfortable to mention and too tender to ignore. He had tried to read but holding a book open with thumb and little finger while clinging to the saddle for dear life with his other hand was a recipe for disaster, and besides that it made him sick after only a few pages.

Perhaps the worst thing was that he was bored.

No, scratch that.

"Seventeen," Gu Yong Ha said mournfully, as a single rain drop splattered on his damnable horse's neck.

"What?" said Moon Jae Shin, turning in his seat to look back at him. "Seventeen what?"

"Weren't we supposed to be back in Hanyang by now?" Gu Yong Ha said by way of response, sidestepping the question as skillfully as he could manage. "Didn't you say it would go faster the other way since there's only the two of us?"

Unearthing the Geum Deung Ji Sa was a major impediment for any overt opposition to the planned construction of Hwaseong, the king's new capital, but as more covert sabotage was not expected so much as it was imminent the king had sent an entire company of the royal guard to accompany the architects of Hwaseong to the construction site, of whom Jung Yak Jong, their erstwhile professor, was most senior. Gu Yong Ha and Moon Jae Shin had come along, supposedly as a nobleman's pleasure outing (leaving out of a different gate, telling everyone who would listen that they were going in a different direction entirely) but secretly as the king's eyes and ears on the journey. And now, the architects safely delivered and the royal guard stationed at their new posts, they were making the journey back alone, bearing information, status reports, and exactly one belly full of resentment.

"We have been making better time," Moon Jae Shin replied, rolling his eyes and turning back around in his saddle. "If you had spent less time sleeping this morning we would be home already."

"I'm fashionable, not tough," Gu Yong Ha grumbled. "I don't even know why I'm here. You could do this. You're better at this kind of thing." Moon Jae Shin's head ducked a little at this, and Gu Yong Ha didn't need to see his face to know he was laughing. "Hey! Don't laugh at me! It's important to know your weaknesses. I don't see you stepping up to admit that you can barely put up your own top knot."

Moon Jae Shin whirled around in his saddle. "Hey!"

"Hey what?" Gu Yong Ha barked back, then settled again, sitting back in his saddle with a sour look on his face. "It's started raining. We're not anywhere close to Hanyang, are we?"

As if on cue, Jae Shin's horse stumbled, nearly losing its footing. He hauled on the reins to help keep balanced, and after a moment of uncertainty the horse managed to right itself.

They had been wandering along one of the high paths that cut through the hills and mountains between Hanyang and Hwaseong, the hillside stretching upward on their right, a steep drop into darkness to their left. The larger party had of course taken the wider road that followed the valleys, but Yong Ha and Jae Shin had decided to take a short cut back, through the mountains.

A few feet ahead of Moon Jae Shin's horse the road ended, replaced by a wide, empty section of gravel and dangerous-looking mud.

Moon Jae Shin looked back at Gu Yong Ha's pale, worried face. "No getting back this way," he said, shrugging. "There was a fork in the road a ways back. Leads back to the main road."

Gu Yong Ha bit his lip, looking from his friend to the broken path ahead. "So what, are we going to ride all the way back tonight? We won't even make it home for breakfast if we have to double back."

Moon Jae Shin tugged on the reins of his horse, bringing it around to go back along the narrow path. "Of course not," he said, twitching the reins and prodding the horse along to take it past Gu Yong Ha. He clapped his friend on the shoulder on his way past, and gave him what could only be called a mischievous grin. "We're going to make camp. Doesn't that sound like fun?"

Yong Ha opened his mouth to protest, but only a high-pitched noise came out.

 

  
Of course there was a fork. Of course it led down to the main road. And of course, like Moon Jae Shin had said they would, they made camp.

It was now beginning to rain in earnest. Not big, fat rain drops like Gu Yong Ha was used to, but the kind of rain that was just mist that had gotten a little bit full of itself. It was an insinuating kind of rain; neither heavy nor even particularly wet by itself (a strange quality for rain), but somehow it found its way onto every fold of silk, every inch of exposed skin - condensing into wet drops on his face and running inexorably down his skin under his clothes.

"I'm never going to dry out ever again," he moaned into his horse's neck.

"Oh, so now the horse is your friend," Jae Shin said.

He had dismounted and was in the process of tying his animal to a tree in the clearing he'd found next to the road, just around the bend from the fork. They'd had to do a little bit of climbing but they'd ended up on a piece of slightly higher ground mostly sheltered by a cluster of large, thick-foliaged trees, carpeted with thick grass and brush that was easily tamped down.

"Moreso than you are," Yong Ha replied bitterly, and promptly fell off the horse. Once Jae Shin had stopped laughing at him (or, anyway, laughing at him so hard that it was difficult to keep his balance), he took the second horse and tied it up next to its partner under one of the larger trees so they were out of the rain. Yong Ha lay on his back in the brush, a stick poking him in the ribs, unwilling or unable to move. (He wasn't sure which, at this point.) "I don't find this as humorous as you do, clearly."

"Clearly," came Jae Shin's voice from somewhere to his left, accompanied by a horse noise. What kind of noise he couldn't say - he'd never made it a point to learn much about horses and now was firmly determined that given the choice between riding a horse and being stripped naked and whipped in the marketplace, he would probably be covered in lash marks by evening.

He sat up and yanked at the gat ties around his neck, pulling it off and shaking it to try to get off the worst of the rain. "You might be able to sleep anywhere, but I can't," he said, levering himself upright and seeking refuge under a tree. "Are you sure there aren't any inns nearby? Maybe there's some kind of... I don't know."

"Maybe a gisaeng house," Jae Shin said, rifling through one of the saddlebags. "On the side of a mountain."

"Stranger things have happened," Yong Ha mumbled irritably to himself, crossing his arms and turning his back on the clearing to face the tree.

"So are you just going to sulk, then?"

"I'm not sulking! I'm..." Maybe it was the aching back, or the cold, or the wet, or the bone-deep exhaustion, but Gu Yong Ha suddenly was at a loss on how to respond. ".... I'm meditating."

"On the tree?"

"Yes, all right, I'm meditating on this tree. This tree is incredibly Confucian. Do you want to argue with me about this? Because I have formed a very deep connection with this tree and I'd like to see you rival that any time soon. Find your own Confucian tree."

"Stop meditating on Confucian trees and come hold this for me."

Despite himself, Gu Yong Ha turned - just a little, not a lot, not enough to make anyone think that they had gotten off the hook for this gross proliferation of injustices - and looked over his shoulder at where Moon Jae Shin was standing, with that stupid, expectant smile on his lips and loops of twine hanging from an outstretched hand. A makeshift tent was already mostly constructed, hanging suspended from a few branches and a deceptively simple network of the self-same twine. "What," Yong Ha said flatly.

Jae Shin shrugged indulgently and gestured toward the tent. "I need you," he replied, and Gu Yong Ha's lungs stopped working.

"What?" he said, again. (A little more breathlessly this time.)

"I need you," Jae Shin repeated, and waggled the twine in his hand. "Somebody has to hold this and keep it tight so that I can finish the tent you're going to sleep in. What, did you think there really was an inn in these woods?" he added incredulously, after a look at Gu Yong Ha's face.

"No." Yong Ha dropped his gat next to the tree without ceremony and stomped over to Moon Jae Shin, holding out a hand for the twine. "I didn't know you had a tent."

"Hey, didn't you know?" Jae Shin flashed him a sideways half-smile. "I'm a man of mystery."

Standing in the dark and the mist, holding tight to a handful of sharp-edged twine, studiously ignoring whatever nonsense his best friend was getting up to in that damn fool tent, Gu Yong Ha considered his place in the universe. He hadn't had to come, come to think of it. The king had actually been very understanding, what with both of them still preparing for the civil service exams and all that. But Moon Jae Shin had said yes before the dust could settle and if no one was around to get him out of trouble (or at least pick up the pieces when trouble was just too tempting) then it could get messy.

Of course now they were in trouble anyway, and here was Moon Jae Shin getting them out of it. The notion made him feel a little off-balance, as though the world were an island which had suddenly turned out to be a boat.

"You're pretty good at this," Yong Ha said suddenly, the words out of his mouth before he stopped to think about them.

"My brother and I used to sleep out in the courtyard during the summer." Jae Shin didn't look up from the particularly complex knot he was tying. "He taught me a few things."

"Ah." Well. That wasn't an awkward revelation at all. "That's..."

"It's fine, really," his friend said, sitting back on his heels and brushing off his hands. "You can let the twine go now, it should be secure. Slowly, though." He stood up and rubbed a hand over his jaw.

Once upon a time Yong Ha would have found it difficult to keep his hand at his side, to not reach out and hold the curve of Jae Shin's jaw in the palm of his hand. (It would be so easy, wouldn't it? He was right there, not even a full arm's length away.) But he'd gotten used to it, the stifling, and it was second nature now. (But he was cold and his clothes were wet and Jae Shin was always, always warm.) Despite himself, he took a step forward.

Jae Shin turned away from him, looking back toward the tree where he'd tied up the horses. "There are some mats and blankets with your horse," he said slowly, as if he were thinking. Then he flashed Yong Ha one of his shutter-quick, sideways smiles. "If you'll get that set up I'll go see if I can find any wood dry enough to catch light."

"Of course," Yong Ha said to the empty space that Jae Shin had left behind.

What had all that been? Was he stupid? Was his brain just addled after spending all day being knocked around on the back of a great big animal with one leg shorter than the others? "Yes, you," he snapped at his horse, throwing open the flap on one of the bags with as much force as he could muster. A few bundles near the top looked promising and he grabbed them without inspecting further, tossing them over his shoulder and stomping back over to the tent. Supposedly the rain would stop someday. Supposedly the sun would come back up. Until then, he was still going to be sleeping on the ground tonight, half a breath away from the only person in the world he wanted, the only person in the world he couldn't have.

He had just finished unrolling the first mat on the ground when he heard the crack.

It was the kind of sound that goes in your ears, clenches your jaw without your input, travels down your spine, curls down deep in your gut - and twists. Gu Yong Ha straightened up so fast he almost threw his back out, spun his head, saw stars. They faded after only a few moments but his vision was still blurred and the night was still dark. "Geol Oh?" he called out, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.

He'd thought the cracking noise was bad, but the sound that came back in response to his call was like ice in his blood.

Afterward he wouldn't be able to recount his movements between standing by the tent and ending up at Jae Shin's side, but from the mud ground into his robes and his new collection of truly impressive scrapes and bruises it had apparently been very exciting. (He would later confess to being a little disappointed that he hadn't been fully present to experience his odyssey first hand.) The tent was on a bank of earth slightly higher than the narrow road, which was slightly higher than the hillside below. The hillside below was even more dark and dank than the clearing above, the trees rooted more closely together, the branches thicker overhead.

And Jae Shin, hanging upside-down by the ankle.

"If you laugh," Jae Shin growled, and jabbed his index finger in Yong Ha's direction, his breathing understandably labored, "I'm going to throttle you once I get down from here."

Yong Ha stared at him, gaping, for what felt like years but was (probably) actually just a few seconds, before stumbling forward, reaching upward. "Idiot," he choked out, wrapping one arm around Jae Shin's stomach and the other around his shoulders, supporting as much of his weight as he could. "How did you manage this? I let you out of my sight for three minutes, and this is what happens?"

"It's dark." Jae Shin grimaced and wrapped his arms around Yong Ha's chest and shoulders in an attempt to right himself. The branches overhead shook, bringing down a storm of dead leaves and twigs on their heads.

"You spent years running around rooftops at night! In the rain!"

"I tripped! Look, just -" Jae Shin spat a leaf out of his mouth. "Okay, I'm going to count to three, and we'll both lift me up at the same time."

"We'll both lift you up? I'm the only one doing any lifting here!"

"One."

"Geol Oh, I swear, if this -"

"Two."

"Damn it, will you just -"

"Three!"

When most of Moon Jae Shin's weight was supported by one of the thick, forked branches overhead Yong Ha hadn't had that much to worry about, but as the boot slipped free and gravity took hold of them both Yong Ha quickly found that he wasn't as strong as he thought he was. Certainly not as strong as he'd hoped he was, and absolutely, definitely, beyond the shadow of a doubt far less strong than he would have needed to be in order to keep Jae Shin from hitting the ground. Hard. With his arms underneath.

"At least I'm on the ground now," Jae Shin said faintly, still struggling for breath but having a bit of an easier time of it now. "You okay?"

Yong Ha gingerly worked one of his arms out from underneath Jae Shin's back. "I'm fine, no thanks to you," he managed. He was still pressed against Jae Shin's chest, face only inches away from his throat, but trying hard to ignore it. Jae Shin's arm was still draped over his shoulders, but he was ignoring it. Jae Shin's heartbeat in his ear, but he was ignoring it. "That was one of the stupidest situations I've ever had to get you out of, and I doubt it'll be the last." Reluctantly, (hating himself for just how reluctant it was), he pushed himself up into a sitting position. "Can you stand?"

Jae Shin sat up. Made a tortured, quiet noise in the back of his throat. Went white. "I can do it," he said, in a small voice.

"Don't lie all the time," Yong Ha said, sighing and rubbing a hand over his face. "It'll become a habit. Right?" Jae Shin had enough bile in him to toss a particularly dirty glare, but didn't protest. "Right. So I guess I'll be lifting you some more." He grinned, winked. Held out a hand. "Ready?"

It had taken about two minutes to get from the tent to the copse of trees just under the narrow road, but nearly half an hour to make it back up. Between Jae Shin's stubborn insistence that he was just fine and could walk on his own (he couldn't) and Yong Ha's beyond-abysmal lack of upper body strength (nonexistent), it all culminated in a singularly miserable experience that neither hoped to ever, ever repeat.

Moon Jae Shin had sustained more than his share of injuries during his life, and all of them hurt in their own way. A long, clean slice with a blade over his chest had a different sting than a crossbow bolt in his side. He was almost surprised that he'd never broken a leg jumping off or over something tall, but he hadn't, and now he had, and he wasn't enjoying himself very much at all. At least he was sitting down now, on a mat under the tent he'd managed to set up, leaning back on his hands, trying to ignore how cold and wet his robes were.

Gu Yong Ha knelt on the ground next to him, yanking at the string holding together a blanket roll. "Do you think it's broken?" he said, without looking up.

Jae Shin grimaced. At some point he'd have to take the boot off and find out, but he wasn't looking forward to it. "I don't know," he replied, and grit his teeth. "It's not so bad."

His friend glanced up with narrowed eyes, furrowed brows. "Don't lie to me." The knot finally came loose and the folded blanket opened like a flower. Yong Ha grabbed it by the edges, fluffed it out, and tossed it expertly over Jae Shin. "Your clothes are soaked. Is there anything else for you to wear? Maybe with the horses?"

"Maybe something, but - what are you doing?"

His yelp didn't pause Yong Ha's hands as he wrestled with the ties of his own silk robes. "Taking off the top layer," he said, shrugging the colorful fabric off his shoulders. A flash of color, a knot untied, and Gu Yong Ha was in just his (mostly) clean white under-jacket and trousers, all his normal color thrown to the ground next to Jae Shin. "What? You think I'm going to run around in the dark in that?" He winked. "You may be my oldest friend, Geol Oh, but I wouldn't ruin a good outfit even for you."

"A good outfit," Jae Shin repeated stupidly. Gu Yong Ha without his robes was like a parade float without flowers. A gisaeng without makeup. A painting of only black ink, white paper. He felt almost... embarrassed? as though Yong Ha had shed more than just his outer layer of clothing.

But he'd left the tent and was just a smear of white in the darkness outside, bobbing around, getting murkier and farther away with each step. There was quiet - and then a voice out of the darkness. "We really have to get you something more interesting to look at, you know. Everything in this bag is the same color. Is this baji?" A moment of almost frantic rustling. "No, a jeogeori. A jeogeori full of holes." Silence. "Geol Oh, you're an embarrassment."

"Oh, thanks," Jae Shin called out into the darkness.

"At least it's not your baji that's full of holes, right?" Rustle rustle. "Geol Oh, your baji are full of holes. That's terrible. I'm bringing you something of mine." A few moments later he was back, arms full of white cotton and blue silk, squatting next to Jae Shin where he sat shivering on his mat. Gu Yong Ha dumped the clothing near his feet. "Need any help?"

"It's fine," Jae Shin mumbled, resisting the urge to tuck his soaked robe closer around his chest.

Gu Yong Ha leaned forward onto one knee and reached out, thin wrists peeking out of his under-jacket's wide sleeves. "At least let me -" and stopped short, his fingertips tucked just barely under the hem of Jae Shin's robe. If Jae Shin hadn't known better (and if it wasn't so dark) he would've thought then that Yong Ha went red before pulling back quickly and bolting upright. "Better yet, you do that. You're an adult, you can change your own clothes. I'm going to... I'm going..."

"You're going...?" Jae Shin repeated, trying (and failing) to track the conversation.

"To get firewood!" Yong Ha finished quickly, the words tumbling over each other. He took a quick step backwards and bonked his head on a taut length of twine, which protested with a resounding twang. "Just not down on the road. Or past the road."

Jae Shin tried to throw off the blanket with one hand, but somehow it seemed to be stuck under something. Too dark to tell what. "I'll go with you. It's dark."

"Idiot, your ankle's broken. Put on some dry clothes and stay put."

"Okay." He put the blanket back down. "Are you coming back?"

Gu Yong Ha stood still for a moment, his face in shadow. "Of course I'm coming back," he said quietly. "Put on something dry. Understand? Hey. Moon Jae Shin." He snapped his fingers. "Understand?"

Jae Shin waved a hand and nodded. His head felt heavy for some reason, and it was hard keeping his eyes open. But he did, at least until Gu Yong Ha had stepped out, a smear of white fading into the darkness. It was strange seeing Gu Yong Ha without his clothes on. Well, no. That wasn't right. He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. Everything was coming out all weird, and his clothes were so wet still. Hadn't Yong Ha said something about that?

Blearily, he reached out and plucked at the pile of fabric at the far end of his blanket. Wait. Hold on. He had to take off what he was wearing first. Wow, this was really hard. Jae Shin giggled at himself, fumbled with the knotted ties at his side for a few seconds before they finally came loose, shrugged off all three layers together without trying to separate them. It was too irritating to peel each of them apart.

A few yanks were all it took to throw off the blanket so he could take off his boots. (Seriously though, what had the blanket been stuck under? Oh. His hand.) His right boot came off no problem but his left ankle had swollen up to three times its original size and getting that boot off proved beyond him. Plus it hurt like hell, of course, so he decided to leave it for the time being.

"Hey, Yeorim," he mumbled, rooting through the tangle of silk and cotton his friend had left behind, "how am I supposed to know what all this is?" He knew that the different parts were probably different colors, but in the dark they all seemed to blur together. He picked something up at random (shaking it to separate it from its fellows) and peered at it closely in a vain attempt to discern its purpose. Baji? A really, really strange looking overcoat?

He was really cold. Why wasn't he wearing anything?

 

  
Gu Yong Ha stomped back through the underbrush, splitting focus between watching his feet, keeping an eye on the tent, and not dropping the small collection of mostly dry sticks he'd managed to gather. He hadn't been able to find much, but the rain had mostly stopped (slowed down, anyway) and what was still wet would probably dry off quick enough once the rest was on fire.

He scuffed his feet on the ground, kicking away the grass and brush to make a clear spot, and dumped the armful of sticks on the still-damp dirt. He knew there was steel and flint in the small bundle of emergency supplies Moon Jae Shin had unpacked in one of the saddlebags, and he had brought along a few candles, so it shouldn't be too difficult to get something going. He made his way over to the horses, rubbing his upper arms vigorously to keep off the chill, and dug around for a while until finally finding what he was looking for in the third place he checked.

Getting the flint and steel to throw off a spark wasn't that hard, but getting the spark to go in the right direction and light the thin candle wick proved very nearly beyond his abilities. It was several minutes and a lot of hissed, quiet swearing before anything resembling a flame bloomed in the darkness of the clearing. When it finally did he hurried to set up a quick structure of sticks around it, and not long after he had an actual fire.

He rubbed a hand over his face, not caring that he was smearing mud down his cheek. The heat and light seemed like a miracle. Hell, maybe it was a miracle - two pampered yangban sons in the middle of a forest, on the side of a mountain, caught in the rain, stuck in a tree, and yet he was still able to build a fire.

They might even survive to tell about it. Who knew.

He almost dozed off in front of the flames but was able to pull himself back from the edge of sleep right before his forehead hit his knees, which he had pulled up against his chest to conserve warmth. He almost wondered what time it was but stopped - it wouldn't really do any good to know, would it? Maybe only a few hours since sunset, though the sunset seemed to be getting earlier every day this time of year. Regardless, Moon Jae Shin needed checking on. He'd probably managed to change by now, right? Gu Yong Ha felt the heat rise in his face. Swallowed. Stood quickly, brushing the dirt and leaves off his baji, and strode over to the open door of the tent.

Moon Jae Shin had managed to take off his robes and one boot. His black trousers were still on (Yong Ha released an exhale of relief that he hadn't realized he'd been holding) but so were both stockings. The clothes Yong Ha had brought for him were mostly scattered on the blanket next to the mat except for his white cotton baji, the leg of which Jae Shin had managed to stick his arm down before apparently passing out cold.

"Idiot," Yong Ha murmured, and knelt down next to his friend, reaching out to gently slide the baji off Jae Shin's arm. But then he touched his skin and jerked back quickly. Jae Shin was burning hot and slick with sweat. Yong Ha leaned in close, examining his friend's face - with the light of the fire outside he could see better, and there didn't seem to be any color in Jae Shin's face at all. Just blue lips, gray cheeks, and sweat on his forehead. His breathing was shallow and ragged and almost seemed to get stuck halfway through each inhalation.

"Shit." He stumbled in his rush to stand, grabbed for something, anything, and picked up the silk jeogeori he'd pulled off not too long before. Yong Ha stared at it for only a moment before biting his lip and ripping the sleeve off at the shoulder and dashing out the door of the tent. The water skin was next to the fire where he'd left it. He pulled the cork out with his teeth and spit it to the ground before dousing the piece of silk in his hand. Another second and he was back at Jae Shin's side, placing the folded, damp silk on his friend's forehead. The blanket was next - a little dirty from being tossed on the ground, but still good - tucked as close as he could around Jae Shin.

"What are you doing?"

Gu Yong Ha stopped cold, his hands still holding onto the blanket. He looked down. Moon Jae Shin's eyes were open, just barely. "What does it look like?" Yong Ha managed, pulling his hands back quickly before hesitating and reaching out again, this time for his friend's forehead. "I really can't leave you alone. Before you got stuck in a tree, and now look at yourself - I leave for ten minutes to get firewood and you're burning up." He pressed one cool hand to Jae Shin's cheek, his temple, his forehead. "You know, you act all tough, but you're not that hardy."

"That feels nice," Jae Shin mumbled, closing his eyes. "It's really... it's really hot in here." He tried to raise his arms but couldn't force the blanket off, and resorted to some half-hearted thrashing. "Why is this...? Is this a blanket? It's too hot."

Yong Ha managed to grab hold of Jae Shin's upper arms after a few tries, and held him tight to the mat to keep him from moving. "You have an incredibly high fever," he hissed, "and if you don't keep that blanket on I'm going to... I'm going..." He stuttered to a stop. "Well, I'm going to do something, and you're not going to like it!"

Jae Shin opened his eyes again and tried to focus on Yong Ha's face, without much success. He looked almost like he was measuring just how much of a protest he was going to have to put up, but then closed his eyes again. "I already don't like it," he sighed.

"I can live with that," Yong Ha replied, sitting back and rubbing a hand over his face. He looked down at Jae Shin and sighed. "What am I going to do with you? I think I'm going insane."

"Don't do that." Jae Shin shook his head like a drunk, tossing it back and forth without concern. "You're already enough."

"Enough what?"

"Enough insane."

"Oh, thanks," Yong Ha grumbled, "I love you too."

Jae Shin opened his eyes, but didn't look at him this time - just stared up at the ceiling of the tent. "Really?" he said quietly, sounding almost breathless.

"Sure," Yong Ha said slowly. "You're my... we're friends, Geol Oh. We've been friends for twelve years." He glanced out at the fire and chewed on the inside of his cheek, mind racing. "You're my... my best friend."

"You're my best friend," Jae Shin repeated. "You should love me. Best friends love each other."

"That's part of the definition."

"Good." Jae Shin closed his eyes again, and there was something final about it, as though he'd heard what he'd wanted to hear. He settled a little, wiggling down into the mat. "I'm glad you love me."

Yong Ha stared at him, suddenly at a loss of what to say.

"Hey." Yong Ha prodded Jae Shin gently in the ribs, but only got a sigh in response. "Are you awake?"

Yong Ha picked up Jae Shin's wrist and felt for a pulse. Weak, but consistent. A hand to his forehead - the fever seemed to have gone down a little, at least. Not enough that Yong Ha was ready to celebrate over it, but a few degrees under the burning hot he'd been not too long before.

There was a bit of blood at the corner of his mouth that Yong Ha hadn't seen before - maybe he'd bit his cheek in the fall? Yong Ha licked his thumb and reached out to scrub it away gently, and Jae Shin moved into his palm like a cat, sighing sleepily. Yong Ha froze stiff, heart pounding.

"Don't," he said to himself. Eased gently down onto one elbow. Felt his breath catch in this throat. Felt the warmth come off of Jae Shin in steady waves. Hands shaking, moved Jae Shin's face slowly toward him.

"Don't," he said and god, god they were so close to each other.

"Don't," he said, voice no louder than a breath.

"Don't," he said.

And stopped, lips only a finger's width away from Jae Shin's. Yong Ha could feel the heat coming off his skin and for half a second wondered if he was feverish as well. It would be so easy to close the distance and just... and just find out, for once, instead of thinking about it and never, ever following through. How many times had Jae Shin laid drunk or asleep on his floor, either at his father's house or in their wing of the Sungkyunkwan dormitories, and Yong Ha had never found the courage to see what kissing him was like? Dozens of times. Scores. Maybe even hundreds. And now...

Now he was sick, and strangely helpless in a way Yong Ha had never seen before. Oh, he'd seen Jae Shin wounded, drunk, exhausted. Stuck in traps. Caught in lies. But not like this. Never like this. He could die if Yong Ha left him alone. He could die even if Yong Ha stayed, for that matter. He couldn't run, he couldn't fight, he couldn't shout his way out of this one. No amount of anger or cunning would fix this. Just time and care.

Gu Yong Ha closed his eyes. Sighed. Breathed in the smell of Jae Shin's hair. And pushed up onto his arm, sitting up, pulling away from the only place he wanted to be. He grabbed the second mat, still tied up innocently in the corner, and began working roughly at unrolling it.

**-**  
 **Eleven Weeks Previous**  
 **-**

Gu Yong Ha arched an eyebrow at the card. Knight of Cups? Maybe he just didn't know enough about these cards yet. He set it down and flipped over the next two cards, one after the other.

"Strength," he read, and then paused. Glanced down at Moon Jae Shin's sleeping form. Made a confused face. "Looks like we have more in common than I thought, Geol Oh," he said, and laid the Hanged Man down on the table next to its fellows.


	5. The Fool

Moon Jae Shin woke up. He folded up his blankets. He washed his face. He changed out of the clothes he'd slept in and put on new undergarments, white and fresh and not a little stiff. He inspected himself in the mirror, rubbing a hand over his chin - should he shave? Would that be too much? Probably. Definitely. Maybe.

He gave up on the debate and worked on putting his hair up into an unfamiliar top knot instead.

If Gu Yong Ha had taught him anything, it was to clean up well when he absolutely had to. Sometimes it just took a little longer than it did other times. Sometimes his hair was tangled, sometimes his comb had fallen behind his chest of drawers and the wall, sometimes it just wasn't in the cards. This time... well. He raked the comb over his scalp aggressively, as if to dare fate itself to get in between him and a perfectly formed top knot. One, two, three, four, five, six, and - and it was up, and done, and it may not have looked perfect but damn if it wasn't put up right.

Next was his manggeon, which he hated, then his under jacket and beoseon, jeogeori and jeonbok. Moon Jae Shin wasn't much good with color. He liked dark blue. Gray. Black. Some white, if he had to. Brown if it's what was left. But today he wore white undergarments, dark red jeogori, and a jeonbok the same pale cream orange of the leaves on the trees outside his window.

He picked up his gat from next to the mirror, the long loop of beads hanging from the temples rattling obnoxiously as they clacked against each other. As much as he hated cleaning up, as much as he hated wearing the manggeon, the peacock colors, the top knot, it was perhaps the gat that he hated the most. Even so, he placed it over his top knot with what might have been something like reverence. Knotted the ties under his chin decisively. Strode to the window, opened the rice-paper frames, and stepped over the windowsill into the dark of morning, so early that not even the sun had yet shown its face.

 

  
Four days after Moon Jae Shin had arrived back at his father's house upon his return from the Hwaseong Fortress construction site, the doctors deemed him fit to walk, though only a little. So he walked. Granted, the distance from his father's house to the house of the Gu family in the mercantile district couldn't honestly be considered small, but after four days in a bed with who knows how many nurses puttering around him constantly, the doctors, the incense, the pandering... suffice it to say, Moon Jae Shin found it difficult to put too much distance between himself and his father's house, full as it was with his constant, well-intentioned tormentors.

It was slow going but he'd done more on worse injuries, and it almost felt like the bad old days again. The pain in his leg. The shouting in the streets. Close your eyes and you could almost believe those godforsaken Noron bastards were still driving Joseon into the ground.

(No offense, Lee Seon Joon.)

When he arrived at the Gu family house, the gate was closed. The servants at the wall claimed there was no one at home. The house sat in silence.

So he walked back to his father's house, the pain in his leg a little worse than it had been that morning.

 

  
Nine days after Moon Jae Shin had arrived back at his father's house upon his return from the Hwaseong Fortress construction site, the doctors were actually still pretty angry about the Walking All The Way To The Mercantile District (And Back) incident, but even they had to admit that he was almost completely healed and no amount of lying around would do any more good at this point. Up until this point in his life, Moon Jae Shin had never gone a whole seven days in a row without some sort of Gu Yong Ha visitation. But the ninth day following his return came and went and no shadow crossed the threshold.

Moon Jae Shin was beginning to get a little worried.

On the tenth day he slipped past the doctors, past the nurses, past the servants and guards at the wall surrounding his father's compound, and sallied forth once more out into Hanyang. Once he'd made it out of the insular neighborhoods of the yangban families the streets grew narrow and close, the people walked with far less caution, the shopkeepers filled the streets and yelled right in his face. (Infinitely preferable to the bowing and scraping he'd had to deal with for more than a week.) He considered looking for Gu Yong Ha at his father's house but thought better of it, instead choosing to meander the back streets and alleyways, looking for somewhere that looked like fun.

The fun was easy to find, but every time he thought he'd caught a glimpse of Hanyang's foremost connoisseur of fun (in all its forms), Gu Yong Ha wasn't there when he turned his head to look. A few hours of this and he'd started thinking he hadn't actually seen Yong Ha at all.

In the dim light of early evening, Moon Jae Shin found his way back to his father's house. The pain in his leg was better, but still stung.

 

  
Thirteen days after Moon Jae Shin had arrived back at his father's house upon his return from the Hwaseong Fortress construction site, he stayed home. The tailor came to him this time, so at least he could stand on a box, be inspected far too closely, and be poked and prodded in all manner of uncomfortable places - all in the comfort of his own home.

It felt like it took longer this time, although maybe that was because he could feel himself being watched. Were servants supposed to invite their families to come and watch when one of the lords of the house was fitted for a new hanbok? Especially when (apparently) everyone in the servants' families was a young woman between the ages of 16 and 28? It was strange. And uncomfortable. And a little bit terrible as well, since every damn time he hiccupped the tailor had to re-measure everything he'd just done.

When everything was completed the tailor left. The servants left. The servants' families left. And Moon Jae Shin went to his room, opened a book, and stared at it for a long time without taking in any of the words.

He'd even sent for Gu Yong Ha, sent a runner with a note over to the Gu's large family compound in the mercantile district. He had made sure to give a few days notice, just in case Gu Yong Ha really was as busy as he seemed to be these days. He'd composed the note very carefully - not too poetic, not too straight-forward, just enough information to make it interesting but not so little as to be simply vague. And what kind of world was it, anyway, when Moon Jae Shin could stand on a box, get stared at by everyone and their sister, have a truly dizzying array of fabric choices thrust upon him, and Gu Yong Ha wasn't there to laugh about it?

It was, apparently, this kind of world.

There was a knock at his door, and Moon Jae Shin jerked out of his dazed state. One, two, three long steps and he was at the threshold, grabbing the latch, pulling the door aside, and -

\- and a servant stood without, bowing deeply and offering up a small white envelope with both hands.

Jae Shin stared at him for moment, the knot in his chest twisting just a little tighter, before coming back to himself and plucking the envelope out of the man's hands without ceremony. He closed the door. Walked back to his book. Sat down.

Opened the envelope, and pulled out the single piece of paper held inside.

미안하다, it said. I'm sorry.

 

  
On the morning before the wedding of Lee Seon Joon and Kim Yoon Hee, Gu Yong Ha took his time getting out of bed. He already knew what he was going to wear and nothing was starting before noon anyway, so why rush? Rushing would get him there early, which was embarrassing, and not a habit he intended to start now.

When he did finally get up, the hanbok he'd picked out the day before was already hanging ready for him in the antechamber. His father had a small team ready to dress him each morning, his mother employed what seemed like a full army, but Yong Ha had gotten used to spending time alone in the morning during his time in his Sungkyunkwan single room and hadn't allowed anyone into his rooms in the morning since returning to his father's house.

There was something quiet and meditative about getting dressed in the morning by yourself, when you have nowhere to be and no one to answer to. Each layer and tie, every knot and loop, all part of a tiny ritual that stayed with you through the day. Gu Yong Ha had come to think of it as a kind of lacing up - of secrets, of observations, of comments that would get him in trouble. Of wants. Of needs. Each button was a silent reminder of everything he wasn't allowed to say, every string a whispered warning not to let himself go.

When the last tie was tied, the last button buttoned, Gu Yong Ha opened the top drawer of his wardrobe and took his time picking out exactly the right fan. It wouldn't be hot today, he knew, but not having a fan was like... like not having a fan. Which was terrible.

He wandered through the rest of the morning in a stupor, not quite awake, not quite asleep. Maybe his father talked to him during breakfast. Maybe his mother asked him about the wedding. Whatever happened, it wasn't noteworthy enough to be present for, so he wasn't. It was how he made it through most days lately - halfway between awake and dreaming, never quite committing either way. Maybe he was just busy. Too much to do, not enough time to do it all in, not enough time to sleep, or visit Moran-gak, or. Or, or. Or a lot of things. For someone with so much to do, it seemed like nothing much happened to him anymore.

And so it went until finally, when late morning was on the brink of turning over to afternoon, Gu Yong Ha stepped over the frame of his father's front gate and out onto the street. It hadn't turned out to be too warm after all (he nodded, an acknowledgement of his own considerable powers of observation) despite the sun glaring bright, beating down on the street, throwing each shadow into sharp relief. He touched the brim of his gat, brought it down just a little bit lower to hide his complexion from the sun, and set off down the road.

Behind him, part of the dark shadows next to the gate peeled away from the wall and fell into step behind his right shoulder.

 

  
Somewhere deep in the back of Moon Jae Shin's head a voice whispered to him. _This is a bad idea_ , it said. _He's probably too busy to talk to you_ , it said. _Like he even cares enough to avoid you_ , it said.

( _Look at his neck_ , murmured an even smaller voice, buried even deeper in the back of his head. _Look at his hands_.)

But Moon Jae Shin had always been good at ignoring it when people told him something was a bad idea, so he pushed the voice down - and reached out.

 

  
Gu Yong Ha couldn't remember being truly frightened very many times in his life.

Sure, he'd been scared. Worried. Anxious. (Terrified, from time to time.) But frightened? His inability to be surprised was a core tenet of his character, something he'd won more than a few bets on. He didn't startle easily. Typically he could see everything coming a mile away.

But when he was walking alone and in silence, only a few minutes from his father's house, no one to be seen in either direction, and someone grabbed his shoulder... well.

Gu Yong Ha spun, stumbled, flailed out with his fan, and hit the stranger hard across the gat brim, knocking him backward. Yong Ha steadied himself, holding his fan out like a sword in front of him, and thought fast. "Hey!" he barked, trying to sound at least a little tough. (Please, let him sound tough.) "Who the hell are you?"

The stranger looked down at himself, carefully brushing dust off his hanbok, before glancing up and meeting Gu Yong Ha's eye. "I could ask the same of you, Yeorim," Moon Jae Shin said, simultaneously straightening up and slouching as only he could.

Gu Yong Ha blinked. Opened his mouth. Closed his mouth. Moon Jae Shin, in front of him, wearing a hanbok. A nice hanbok, with good colors. Well tailored. Hmm. "Where did you come from?" he managed, coming back to himself after only a few seconds.

"Why have you been avoiding me?" Moon Jae Shin replied, reaching forward and wrapping his hand around Yong Ha's extended wrist, pulling the smaller man along with him as he set off again down the street.

Yong Ha stumbled a little as he followed along, dragged as he was by the arm. "I haven't been! What are you - ah, that hurts." He resisted Jae Shin's hold on his wrist, just a little. "What are you doing here?"

"Sorry, I thought we were going to same wedding."

"We are, but..."

"But?"

"But your father's house is on the opposite side of Hanyang," Yong Ha finished lamely. "We could just... meet in the middle. At the wedding."

Moon Jae Shin stopped still, and Yong Ha narrowly avoided slamming into the back of his best friend's shoulder. "What," he said, flashing one of his half grins, "you think that's enough to keep me away?" And pulled. Yong Ha's chest tightened as he took a quick, steadying step forward, stopping only a few inches short of Jae Shin's side. He focused on his wrist instead, held between them in Jae Shin's fist - it looked so small and pale compared to his friend's hand, and his stomach flipped a little. "I asked why you've been avoiding me," Jae Shin said.

Yong Ha tore his eyes away from his wrist, looked his friend in the face, and regretted it instantly. He was doing that thing again, where he talked tough and condescending, but the set of his jaw and the tightness at the corners of his mouth betrayed him. "I've been busy," he lied, and it must have shown on his face because Jae Shin inhaled a sharp laugh and dropped his wrist.

"Right," he said, and looked down at their feet. He drew in a sharp breath as if about to speak, but didn't. Ran a hand over his jaw. "That makes sense," he added finally, and turned, setting off again down the street. Alone, this time.

"Hey!" Yong Ha nearly tripped rushing after him, waving his fan as if Jae Shin would stop for that. "I mean, now that you're here, let's -"

"Let's what," Jae Shin said. Yong Ha swallowed, glancing sideways at his friend's face. He looked strangely exhausted.

"Let's walk together," Yong Ha said, and slipped a hand around Jae Shin's elbow. When Jae Shin glanced down his arm in confusion he just bumped him in the shoulder. "Keep walking or we'll never get there," he said. "If there's anything I hate more than being early, it's being late."

 

  
"I can't believe you fell asleep," Moon Jae Shin hissed, dragging Gu Yong Ha along by his upper arm.

Gu Yong Ha wobbled as he walked. "Do I have to get married?" he mumbled, wrinkling his nose. "It seems so boring. They just... sat there. For hours."

"They weren't just sitting there. Anyway, it's traditional."

"Tradition is stupid."

"You're stupid."

The wedding was over. The sun was setting. Gu Yong Ha had fallen asleep halfway through the ceremony and had spent one and a half incredibly uncomfortable hours slumped on Moon Jae Shin's shoulder. He was awake now, but only barely, and felt a little drunk. Which was probably why he was supporting his weight on Jae Shin. Definitely, that was definitely why. "Don't call me stupid," he mumbled. "I'm Gu Yong Ha."

"Let's go get a drink, Gu Yong Ha," Moon Jae Shin replied after a moment, and threw an arm over his shoulders.

Yong Ha had to tip his head so as not to bump their gat brims together, but he didn't care. "I should probably go home," he breathed, and hated himself for it.

They kept walking though, in silence. Moon Jae Shin's arm stayed around his shoulders and he felt warm in spite of the chill. "You don't have to," Jae Shin said.

"I don't have to," Yong Ha repeated.

They had turned down a narrow street, almost more of an alley than a thoroughfare. People were out and about, yelling and running about, going on errands, buying things, selling things. Going to taverns. Going home. Going to work. But none of them were on this street, and even with the noise of the capital city surrounding them it still seemed quiet.

"I want to show you something," Jae Shin said, stopping suddenly short, pulling Yong Ha around with one hand on his shoulder. He glanced at him, and grinned in a way that was excited, embarrassed, bashful - like a kid with a secret. "Do you trust me?"

"Have you ever once given me a good reason to trust you?" Yong Ha replied.

That brought Jae Shin up short, and he stared at him for a second - then threw his head back and laughed, so hard he was almost crying. "No," he managed finally, wiping his eyes with the back of a hand. "I don't suppose I have. But still -" he grinned and reached for the gat strings tied at his throat, teasing the knot open with a fingertip "- do you trust me? Just once?"

"I'll always trust you, Geol Oh." Yong Ha considered this for a moment. "It'll probably be the death of me, but still."

"Stop talking and take your gat off," Jae Shin said, using one hand to hold his own gat and reaching out with the other to untie Yong Ha's.

Yong Ha colored and slapped his hand away. "Stop that!"

"Take it off!"

"Why?"

"Didn't you just say you trusted me?" Jae Shin's smile fell a little, but the quirk in the corner of his mouth was still there. He looked exposed like this, hair up, no gat brim to hide behind. Yong Ha's chest tightened, and he reached up to untie his gat strings.

Jae Shin glanced down at Yong Ha's throat and inhaled a short, sharp breath before his eyes skittered away again, focusing on something, anything other than Yong Ha.

This was it. This right here. This was why he'd been avoiding Moon Jae Shin.

 

  
It hadn't been his plan from the beginning. He hadn't intended to end up in the alleyway. He hadn't intended to talk Yong Ha into anything. He'd just planned to catch him away from everyone else, before the wedding, get some kind of answer out of him, but that hadn't worked out the way he wanted. When it came down to it he didn't know how to talk to Yeorim, not really, and so he'd gotten up early for nothing.

( _Maybe not nothing_ , whispered a very small voice in the back of his head.)

But now they were in the alley and he'd gotten a dumb idea and Yong Ha was - he was taking his gat off, is what he was doing. He was taking it off and setting it carefully against the wall. It was a normal thing to do. Men took their gat off all the time. Men did that. Men took off their gat. They were men. Yong Ha was a man. Taking his gat off.

Yong Ha was a man snapping his fingers under Jae Shin's nose. "Oi, Geol Oh. Are you awake?"

Jae Shin blinked, and swatted at Yong Ha's hand irritably. "I'm awake. Just trying to figure out how to make this work."

His friend leaned back on his heels, crossing his arms over his chest and watching him in a way that could only be called suspicious. "How to make what work?"

"How to get you where I want you," Jae Shin replied absent-mindedly, inspecting a stack of crates against the wall of the nearest building. The sun had finished setting and the light was dim here, so far from the main road. "Do you think you can - what?" he finished stupidly, glancing up and finally seeing the look on Yong Ha's face.

Yong Ha opened his mouth as if to say something sharp, cheeks flushed, but then closed it again when he seemed to think better of it. "Do I think I can what?"

"Come over here."

"I can do that," Yong Ha said, and proved it. "What next?"

Jae Shin tested his left ankle, turning it experimentally a few times. It seemed all right. A little stiff, but better than it had been even a week ago. He looked up at the edge of the roof stretching out overhead. There was nothing for it. He'd come this far, might as well go for it.

He tensed, inhaled, and sprang up onto the short wall between the alleyway and the building, finding his balance on the stones along the top. Then turned, bent down on one knee, and extended a hand to Gu Yong Ha. "Coming?"

If he didn't think he'd lose his balance and fall off the wall, he might have started laughing at the look on Yong Ha's face. It was a mixture of confusion, horror, awe, and just a little bit of something he couldn't quite work out. He took a step back, looking back and forth between Jae Shin's hand and his face.

Jae Shin hesitated. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe -

\- Yong Ha reached up and took his hand. Swallowed nervously. Nodded. "I trust you," he said.

Jae Shin grinned and pulled his friend up until they were both standing (some more confidently than others) on top of the wall. "Wow," Yong Ha said, his voice shaking almost imperceptibly. "This is... this is great. I feel very tall." He swallowed. "This is what you're showing me, right? And now we're done?"

"That's cute," Jae Shin replied, and turned, walked along the wall. Stepped over on to the nearest roof. "Are you coming?"

"I thought you were done with this," Yong Ha hissed, following his friend against his better judgment. "Aren't you going to be a public official? Do public officials run around on rooftops?"

"The good ones do."

"Jerk."

"Take my hand. It's easier."

Gu Yong Ha extended a hand but balked at the last second, pulling it back again and going just a little pale. "I think I'd just take you down with me."

"No one's falling down," Moon Jae Shin coaxed, hand still held out, palm up. "Just get up here."

Yong Ha sidled along the wall in tiny, nervous steps, clenching and unclenching his fists. "You do this all the time. Of course you wouldn't be worried." He glanced down at the ground, went even whiter than he was already, and hurriedly stared up at the sky.

Jae Shin gawked. Lowered his hand. Stepped back down onto the wall from his spot on the low roof. "You're scared of heights," he said.

Yong Ha gasped as if Jae Shin had slapped him, and whapped him on the arm with his fan. "I'm - I am not! This isn't... this just isn't... I don't do this all the time," he sputtered. "I'm not... shut up!"

"I'm not laughing at you." Yong Ha stilled, looked up at him, dropped the fan slowly. Jae Shin swallowed and held out his hand again. "If you don't want to, I'll help you get down. I know you're not used to this. But I..." He stuttered to a halt, feeling more pathetically stupid than he had in a long time. "I still have something I'd like to show you."

The space between them seemed to yawn wider, his hand stretching out into nothing. But then Yong Ha, in fits and starts, reached out to close the gap, slipping his fingers against Jae Shin's palm. "I guess this isn't the stupidest idea you've ever had," he said, grinning nervously.

( _It might be_ , whispered a very small voice in the back of Jae Shin's head.)

"That's probably true," Jae Shin replied, stepping back up onto the low roof next to him. "But this is the worst one you've gone along with."

"What am I thinking?" Yong Ha groaned, faltering at the thought of stepping over the gap. "No. No, I take it back. This is a terrible idea. I hate this idea."

Jae Shin sighed and rolled his eyes. "Make up your mind." And pulled.

For one heart-stopping second Yong Ha hung in the air like laundry, halfway between wall and rooftop, nothing under him, nothing above him, nothing to hold onto but Jae Shin. Then he was on the tiles, his shoes sliding on the ceramic, and was this supposed to be better? It didn't seem better. This wasn't better.

( _Okay_ , he thought, as Jae Shin wrapped an arm around him to steady him. _Maybe this was better_.)

"You're all right," Jae Shin said, pressing Yong Ha's shoulder against his chest, trying to act as an anchor. He was already regretting this - the look of panic on his friend's face was like a knife in the gut. "You're okay. I've got you."

Yong Ha gasped for breath, clutched desperately at the sleeve of Jae Shin's jeogeori... then punched him hard in the shoulder. "You're such an asshole."

Jae Shin laughed. "What does that say about your taste in friends? Come on." He grabbed Yong Ha's wrist. "I don't want to miss anything."

"What is there to miss up here? You can see -" Yong Ha trailed off as Jae Shin pulled him to the opposite end of the roof. "Oh."

The capital city stretched out below them, the streets just starting to light up, lamp by lamp, as dark fell over the neighborhoods and markets. The sky wasn't quite black yet - red and purple and orange still streaked the clouds overhead, but were fading gradually. A few miles away from their spot on the roof the king's palace lay sprawled out, its walls and terraces twinkling into illumination as guards, invisible from this distance, marched its length with lamplighters on long poles. To Jae Shin it had always seemed like a kind of trade-off: the sky was going to bed, the streets were waking up - piece by piece, light by light.

Maybe the only thing better than watching the city blink awake was watching Gu Yong Ha, seeing it for the first time.

"Oh," Yong Ha said again, and forgot to resist Jae Shin's hold on his wrist. "Oh." He swallowed. "I can see why you like this."

"This might have been my favorite thing about being the Red Messenger," Jae Shin confessed, still watching his friend's face.

"Might have been?" Yong Ha blinked, cocked his head, and looked at him. "So you're really done."

That's not what he'd meant to happen. Jae Shin hissed out a slow exhale and dropped Yong Ha's wrist. "No," he said, then thought better of it. "Well, maybe." He grimaced and scratched the back of his neck. "I don't know. I don't need to anymore, I guess."

"What changed?" Yong Ha waved a hand wide over the city. "There's still injustice out there. People with a hand in your brother's death are still walking around free."

Jae Shin reached out and grabbed his friend's wrist again. "Stop that," he said. "Someone's going to see you. I said, I don't know. My brother..." He hesitated. "My brother may not be avenged, but I've honored his memory. The Geum Deung Ji Sa - we found that. The new capital is being built. A new Joseon has a chance at being born." Yong Ha was staring at him, but he couldn't stop. "I'm not going to change anything else by scattering words. I have to... I don't know. I have to go out there and actually do something. I'm not just shouting into the wind anymore."

Yong Ha's lips parted, just a little, as he seemed to consider what to say. "Moon Jae Shin."

"What?"

"My wrist hurts."

Moon Jae Shin blinked, looked down at Yong Ha's wrist still clutched in his hand, and dropped it as it were a venomous snake. "Ah..." He swallowed. "Sorry."

Yong Ha shrugged, rubbing blood back into his hand. "Occupational hazard," he said simply. "You know..." He paused. "You aren't living for anything anymore. Wasn't that all there was?"

Well, shit. Moon Jae Shin turned away, pretending to look out over the city but actually hoping against hope that Yong Ha hadn't seen the look on his face. "Maybe." Shit. "I don't really know anymore." Shit! "It's... I've... I don't think that it's -" A hand on his arm, pulling him so, so gently back around.

"It's all right," Yong Ha said. "Really."

In the darkness he looked almost like a ghost. A hallucination, maybe. He didn't look like Yeorim, although maybe that was just because of the look on his face - no irreverent, vulpine grin. No narrowed eyes. Just Yong Ha, the Yong Ha behind whatever it was that made up Yeorim. He looked tired. Jae Shin's chest tightened and he took an involuntary step forward. "Why have you been avoiding me?" he said, and hated himself - the question sounded so petulant, childish. Not the way he wanted to sound. Not the person he wanted to be. He stepped back again, and shook his head - "Never mind. Don't worry about it." - but Yong Ha's hand shot out, grabbed him around the elbow.

"Because I can't have you so close anymore." And just like that the words were out of Yong Ha's mouth, hanging in the air between them. He was in front of the firing squad. The look on Jae Shin's face bit into him like an arrowhead, squirming under his skin, between his muscles, deep into his chest.

Jae Shin shook his hand off his arm. "What?"

"I don't mean it like that, I mean -"

"Then what do you mean?"

"I worry about you," Yong Ha said, scrambling for something, anything. "I know that I hang around you too much. You're probably sick of me."

"I'm not sick of you."

"But you will be," he said, taking a step back, clenching his fists. "You'll get sick of me."

But Jae Shin followed, stepping forward, trying to close the distance. "That doesn't make any sense," he challenged. "You've been my shadow for twelve years - if I haven't gotten sick of you so far, why avoid me now?"

Because there's no way this is going to work out well. Because you're your father's only son. Because I can't get out of being Yeorim, the womanizer. Because you can't get out of finding a wife, having children.

Because I've always loved you.

Because I think you might have started loving me.

"Just give me a little time," Yong Ha said, his voice cracking, and took another step back. But there was no roof left to step back on, and the world shifted around him.

If Moon Jae Shin hadn't been so close, things would have ended very differently. For one thing, they probably would have ended altogether, and Yong Ha's concerns wouldn't have mattered at all anymore. But he was, and they didn't. Instead Jae Shin leapt forward, grabbing hold of Yong Ha's forearms desperately, then settling his weight into his heels and yanking. Yong Ha's head snapped back as his trajectory was suddenly reversed.

And then he was back on the roof, his heart in his throat, his ears humming with panic, Moon Jae Shin's arms wrapped tight around him. "Don't do that," Jae Shin gasped in his ear. "Don't ever do that to me again."

"This was your idea," Yong Ha grumbled, but he clutched at the back of Jae Shin's robes, his heart pounding. He swallowed, trying to ignore the warmth of him. "I really... I really hate heights."

He kept expecting Jae Shin's grip to loosen, that he would have to let him go, that this would be over, but... but Jae Shin just laid his forehead down on Yong Ha's shoulder, letting out a shuddering sigh. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I'm okay." This wasn't the way this was supposed to go. Jae Shin was supposed to shove him off like always. "Are you all right?"

And just like that, it was over. Jae Shin stepped away, dropped his arms, stared down at the rooftop under their feet. Then reached out one more time, his eyes flickering, and tentatively, anxiously, gently took hold of Yong Ha's wrist. Yong Ha's pulse quickened and god, what if could Jae Shin feel the thrum of it on the underside of his wrist? Probably not. Definitely not. No possible way. Yong Ha looked down at Jae Shin's hand on his wrist, then scanned his face. "Geol Oh?"

Jae Shin couldn't think over the buzzing noise in his ears. He couldn't look at anything but Yong Ha's wrist in his hand - his hands were so much smaller, so much whiter than his. He'd never been shot or stabbed or chased. He'd never been in any real danger before, not really, not until Jae Shin had talked him into coming up onto a rooftop despite his protestations and then very nearly chased him off again. Yong Ha's pulse beat fast under his thumb - probably still scared - and Jae Shin wished he was dead. He'd done this. He'd done this.

"Don't get hurt," he said, because it was the only thing he could think to say. He hesitated, then looked up into Yong Ha's face - his expression of confusion and fear stung. "Don't get hurt," he repeated. "I couldn't stand it."

"I usually try not to," Yong Ha stammered. He swallowed. "This is a very touching moment, but..."

Jae Shin froze. "What?"

"Can we get down? Please?" Gu Yong Ha's face was white as a sheet, but even so he still managed to crack a half smile. "It's getting cold, and I really don't want to fall down any more than I already have."

After only a moment of hesitation, Jae Shin stepped backward, turning, and carefully began picking his way back toward the lowest point of the roof where they'd come up, Yong Ha's wrist still firmly in hand. "Step where I step," he said, his voice flat. "And don't fall off."

"You know, I was going to fall, but now that you've said that I suppose I won't." That got Yong Ha a glare. He waved his free hand in a placating gesture. "Sorry, sorry. Just a joke. Please, don't stop on my account."

It only took a few minutes to get from the roof to the short wall, from the wall back down to the ground. It could have taken even less time if Jae Shin hadn't hovered worriedly over Yong Ha the whole time, keeping at least one hand on him throughout the entire process. Once down, though, he let go, and Yong Ha took three whole steps before crumpling to the ground.

Jae Shin didn't even remember moving to his side: one blink and he was kneeling on the ground next to him, one hand over his shoulders, one on his arm. "What happened? Are you okay?"

Yong Ha reached up with one trembling hand and patted Jae Shin on the chest - once, twice, three times. "Never let me do that," he said, his voice shaking. "Please. Never let me do that ever again."

Jae Shin's breath caught in his throat. "I'm sorry."

"I told you, don't be. It's really okay. Just... not again." Yong Ha glanced up at him, and breathed one short, sharp laugh. "Okay?"

Jae Shin hissed in his breath, almost as if preparing himself to jump into icy water, but still felt like he couldn't breathe. Yong Ha was there, right there, narrow shoulders in his arms, scared but grinning. ( _Just touch him_ , whispered a tiny voice in the back of his head.)

"Okay," he said, staring.

"Help me up," Yong Ha sighed, holding out a hand.

Jae Shin took it, and they stood up together. Yong Ha patted the dust and dirt off his hanbok but Jae Shin just stood there, watching him. "Hey. Yeorim."

"Yeah?" He was poking around for his gat now, looking along the wall for where he'd left it.

"Don't avoid me anymore."

Yong Ha looked up at him, surprised, then looked down again. "I can't promise that," he said, his voice small.

Jae Shin took a step forward. "Please. I'm not... if you're not around..."

"If I'm not around, then what?"

"I think I'd go crazy," Jae Shin managed, clenching and unclenching his fists. "You wouldn't see me, you didn't come when I sent for you, I looked everywhere for you. Two weeks. Two weeks!" He laughed, shaking his head in disbelief. "It's so stupid. I couldn't focus on anything, I kept expecting you to show up any minute, but you never did. You've been by my side for what feels like my whole life. What changed? Please, just... if I did something, just tell me. Don't avoid me anymore." He swallowed. Deflated. Looked at the ground between them. "Please."

"You didn't do anything," Yong Ha said. "I'm sorry. It's not you. You'll be okay without me for a while. I just need a little bit of time." He grinned, but the smile didn't reach his eyes. "I'll be back to bother you before you know it."

And then he was gone, and Moon Jae Shin was alone in the alleyway.

It was as though the night had been holding its breath, only now exhaling. Jae Shin stood still in the dark for a long time, his heart hammering, his breath shallow, not knowing what to do. Yong Ha had been... he'd been right there, within arm's reach. But what? What was missing? Why did it matter? Wasn't this sort of good? Jae Shin closed his eyes and breathed in deep. Maybe this was a good thing. Gu Yong Ha hadn't left him alone in years - maybe it would give him the time to figure a few things out. Get some stuff done. Study for the civil service exam in peace.

Yes. This was good. He opened his eyes and started for home. This wouldn't be so bad. When he saw Gu Yong Ha tomorrow, he'd tell him that everything would be... except he wouldn't be seeing Gu Yong Ha tomorrow. Or the day after that. Or the day after that.

Jae Shin stopped cold, right outside the gate of his father's house. If someone had slapped him across the face he wouldn't have noticed. He thought about the feel of Yong Ha's wrist in his hand. He thought about the shape of his body in his arms. He thought about the length of his neck. The color of his hair. The look in his eyes when Jae Shin had asked him not to avoid him anymore.

He'd never been stabbed in the heart before, but suddenly he had a very good idea what it might feel like.

Jae Shin stepped over the frame of the gate. Walked into his father's house. Climbed the stairs. Went into his room. Closed the door behind him. Took off his manggeon, took down his hair. Took off his hanbok slowly, layer by layer, dropping each piece of fabric unceremoniously on the floor as he moved slowly through the room, until he was wearing only his trousers. Opened the window.

Lay down on the floor.

Fell apart.

**-**   
**Thirteen Weeks Previous**   
**-**

Two more cards lay face down on the table. Gu Yong Ha leaned back on his hands, trying to decide whether or not to wake Jae Shin up and get him home - he'd only paid for the room for the night, and the owner of the tavern would be coming up to throw them out any time now. Jae Shin was sleeping quietly now, not like before when he was still tossing and turning. Maybe he'd be all right after all, lost love or not.

Yong Ha reached forward drunkenly and flipped over the second to last card. The Fool stared back up at him.

"I could have told you that," he said.


	6. The Tower

Moon Jae Shin opened his eyes.

He was standing in the middle of an empty room, longer than it was wide. No windows - only two sliding rice paper doors at the opposite end. A strange yellow light seemed to come out of the air itself, illuminating everything, and some kind of bright white light shone on the other side of the doors, beaming through the rice paper. There was no sound, not even the sighing of the wind, and he seemed to be absolutely, perfectly alone. Wherever he was, it was cold. He wrapped his arms around his chest and, squinting in the light, moved toward the door.

Despite the length of the room it only took him five, six steps before he reached the door. He stood there for a moment, his hand on the latch, heart thumping. Still no sound.

Well. What else was there to do? He slid the door open, and stepped out into the light.

The next room was very nearly identical to the last, except for its contents - in the very middle of the room someone was sitting, back facing Jae Shin, bent just slightly over a short table, calligraphy brush in hand. The figure was wearing a long golden robe, unbelted and loose. Black hair tied back into a single long braid.

"Excuse me?" Jae Shin said into the silence, and his voice echoed off the walls. The figure didn't seem to notice him, the calligraphy brush still working slowly, diligently on the paper. Jae Shin cleared his throat nervously and took a few tentative steps until he was directly behind the figure. Considered his options. Moved around to the side and slowly sat down, keeping his eyes on the paper.

Whatever the inhabitant of the room was working on, it wasn't anything related to Confucianism. It wasn't in hangeul, it wasn't hanja, it wasn't any writing system he'd seen before. It was just loops and circles, straight lines and curved ones, mixed all together on the paper in an indecipherable jumble.

Something about this wasn't right.

He opened his mouth as if to speak, but nothing came out. Instead he just looked up, into the face of the writer.

Gu Yong Ha looked up, smiled back in silence, and turned his attention back to the paper in front of him.

Jae Shin let out a strangled noise and grabbed Yong Ha's shoulder. "What are you doing here? Are you okay?" He hadn't been worried before (why hadn't he been worried? what about this was normal?) but now suddenly he was terrified. Gu Yong Ha, always so sure of himself, so put together, sitting alone in a room with his robes undone, his hair down, writing nonsense in silence. "Gu Yong Ha!"

The calligraphy brush stilled for a moment before Yong Ha carefully, slowly set it back down on its rest. He looked up into Jae Shin's face, smiled, and stood, taking Jae Shin's hand into his own. His gold-colored robes fluttered around him - the sleeves were long and loose, the thin, fine fabric bunching at his wrists. He wasn't wearing anything underneath except his baji - no underjacket, no stockings. Just thin gold silk and the pale skin of his chest.

Jae Shin swallowed, tore his eyes away from the narrow, unbroken line of skin, and stood up slowly. Yong Ha was still holding onto his hand gently - deceptively gently - but when he tried to take his hand back Yong Ha's grip didn't loosen. Instead he just tugged slightly, insistently, taking a step backward away from the short table. Jae Shin followed (what else was he supposed to do?) and Yong Ha smiled. Stopped moving backward. Pulled one more time.

One stumbling step forward and they were almost touching. Jae Shin's heart pounded in his chest, his pulse buzzed in his ears. Yong Ha looked at him. Jae Shin swallowed, turned his head away. His hands were trembling. His throat was dry. And then -

\- and then Yong Ha's hands were on his skin.

Jae Shin flinched but didn't back away - maybe he was too surprised, maybe he was too uncertain - just gasped at the touch, burning like hot iron on his skin. Yong Ha leaned in close, moved so that his hands were on Jae Shin's back, and silently, sweetly laid soft lips on his collar bone.

 

  
Moon Jae Shin opened his eyes.

He was still lying on the floor of his room next to the open window where he'd laid down the night before, wearing only his trousers - no mattress, no blankets, no pillow. The morning dew had collected on his skin and a cool autumn breeze breathed in through the window, but he felt overheated in spite of it. He took in one shuddering breath and squinted in the light beaming in through the window, shading his eyes with his forearm.

What the hell. What the hell. What was that? What kind of dream was that? It had felt so real. His skin still burning where Yong Ha had touched him in the dream, though the heat was fading fast. He groaned and cracked his neck, levering himself up into a sitting position, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.

He paused. Glanced down at himself. Swore very, very quietly.

It had been years since he'd woken up this hard. Damn it. What the hell. Maybe he'd... maybe he'd had a different dream? After the dream with Gu Yong Ha, a different dream. Maybe a dream with a woman. It had to have been a dream with a woman. Right? A woman. In a dream.

Jae Shin hissed one long, irritable exhalation and laid back down gingerly, trying not to move in any way that could possibly exacerbate the situation. He covered his face with both hands and breathed slowly, slowly, casting about for something to think about other than - anyway, something else to think about. Something else. Something other than Gu Yong Ha.

God, he'd been so scared last night. He'd never seen Yong Ha that scared. (Jae Shin laughed a little, thinking of the look on his face.) Of course, he'd almost fallen off the roof, and probably would have died if Jae Shin hadn't caught him.

Wow, no. This was exactly the opposite of what he wanted. Jae Shin sat up again, pulled a truly terrible face, and glared down at himself. "Stop," he growled.

His body didn't listen. It never did.

Eventually he gave up and tried just standing up, getting dressed, finding something else to do. He had to study for the civil service exam. He needed to eat breakfast at some point. He had an appointment with his father in the afternoon. He could be busy. He could be just as busy as Gu Yong Ha. He had things to do, places to be, people to talk to about important things. None of them involved Yong Ha at all, which was perfect.

Moon Jae Shin pulled his robe tight and tied his hair back. This was perfect. This was what he wanted. No distractions.

 

  
Moon Jae Shin opened his eyes.

He was standing in the middle of an empty room, longer than it was wide. No windows - only two sliding rice paper doors at the opposite end. A strange yellow light seemed to come out of the air itself, illuminating everything, and some kind of bright white light shone on the other side of the doors, beaming through the rice paper. There was no sound, not even the sighing of the wind, and he seemed to be absolutely, perfectly alone.

What, again?

He sighed and rubbed his jaw with a hand. Was he going to have this dream every night from now on? Maybe there would be something different in the next room this time. If he was going to be here he may as well find out.

Despite the length of the room it only took him five, six steps before he reached the door. He slid the door open, and stepped out into the light.

The next room was very nearly identical to the last, except for its contents - in the very middle of the room someone was sitting, back facing Jae Shin, bent just slightly over a short table, calligraphy brush in hand. The figure was wearing a long golden robe, unbelted and loose. Black hair tied back into a single long braid.

He swallowed. "Gu Yong Ha?"

The figure didn't seem to notice him, the calligraphy brush still working slowly, diligently on the paper. Jae Shin rubbed a hand over his face. Glanced back the way he'd come. The doors were gone now - just a solid wall remained. Well, fine. After a moment of hesitation he managed to steel himself enough to take the few short steps it took to bring him to the figure's side. "Gu Yong Ha," he said again, his voice rough.

Gu Yong Ha looked up, smiled back in silence, and turned his attention back to the paper in front of him.

The panic rose in him all over again, despite knowing that he'd seen this before. He settled onto one knee and touched Yong Ha on the shoulder. "Are you all right?"

The calligraphy brush stilled for a moment before Yong Ha carefully, slowly set it back down on its rest. He looked up into Jae Shin's face, smiled, and stood, taking Jae Shin's hand into his own. Jae Shin tried not to focus on his gold-colored robes this time, trying instead to meet his eyes as he stood up. If Yong Ha was holding onto his hand, that meant... he tried to pull his hand back, but again had no success. At least this time he'd be ready when - Yong Ha pulled at his hand and he stumbled forward anyway, his breath catching in his throat.

This time Yong Ha's hands were on his skin before he could blink, moving up his sides, over his shoulders. He shivered despite the heat and tried to breathe, tried to bring his hands up to Yong Ha's shoulders to push him away... but Yong Ha leaned in close and laid soft lips on his collar bone. On his shoulder. On his neck. Smoothed thin, warm hands over his shoulders, pushing Jae Shin's robe off his shoulders and down his arms.

Damn. Damn. Damn. Jae Shin closed his eyes, groaned, leaned in just a little before catching himself and pulling back again. "Stop," he managed, his throat tight, but Yong Ha's hands had found their way up to his neck, fingers running up the back of his scalp. "Stop," he whispered, but Yong Ha's lips were on his jawline now. "Moon Jae Shin," he said. "Stop."

Wrapped his arms around Yong Ha's body. Pulled him close.

 

  
Moon Jae Shin opened his eyes.

Fuck.

Moon Jae Shin closed his eyes again and thumped himself hard in the forehead with a fist.

Fuck. Shit. Damn.

He sat up, with a little difficulty (really? again?), and rubbed a hand over his face. The first time he'd had this dream he could almost understand why, with Gu Yong Ha so fresh in his mind from the night before. But he'd kept so busy yesterday. Done all kinds of things that had absolutely nothing to do with Yong Ha. Talked to people, tried to act like a productive member of society, all the things that took so much energy that he hardly bothered to do them at all.

He'd gone to bed the night before too exhausted to think, let alone think about Gu Yong Ha. But again, the dream. The same dream, exactly the same, except - no. No. No, he wasn't going to think about it. Weird things happened in dreams. That was basically what dreams were for, right?

Right?

Moon Jae Shin leaned forward until he was bent over double and breathed deep, cleansing breaths. He tried to imagine a waterfall, or a field of wildflowers. He thought about his mother. He thought about breakfast. He thought about writing poetry on red pieces of paper, and the sting of an arrow in his side.

Eventually, as satisfied with his progress as he was likely to get, he got out of bed. Folded up his blankets. Resolved to keep even busier today than he had yesterday, and, tonight, sleep without dreaming.

 

  
Moon Jae Shin opened his eyes.

He was standing in the middle of an empty room, longer than it was wide. No windows - only two sliding rice paper doors at the opposite end. A strange yellow light seemed to come out of the air itself, illuminating everything, and some kind of bright white light shone on the other side of the doors, beaming through the rice paper. There was no sound, not even the sighing of the wind, and he seemed to be absolutely, perfectly alone.

"No," he said into the empty room. "No. We are not doing this." His words didn't echo - the walls seemed to swallow them up so that it was like he hadn't spoken at all.

He glared at the doors at the other end of the room. They were almost inviting, in a way. They wanted him to pass through them, into the next room. He turned his back on them instead. Sat down crosslegged on the floor. Closed his eyes and waited to wake up.

It was a new thing, being bored inside of a dream. He rarely remembered his dreams upon waking but when he did they were almost invariably nightmares. Monsters he couldn't escape, people he couldn't save, fires he could never put out. To be sitting calmly like this was new. So what if he was just waiting to wake up? It was better than the alternative.

As if summoned by the thought, Jae Shin heard a noise behind him - the quiet rasp of a door sliding open.

He opened his eyes and stared down the wall in front of him. Can you imagine things like that in dream? You can. You have to. If you can't, then he really had heard it, and he wasn't sure what to do with that information.

With a dearth of other options, he decided to ignore it. It was his dream, after all. If he ignored it, it would go away.

Warm hands touched his shoulders. (He was ignoring it.) Thin fingers brushed his hair off his neck. (He was ignoring it.) Lips pressed against his spine, just above his collar. (He was ignoring it.) Long, pale arms, covered with gold silk sleeves, wrapped around his shoulders. (He was ignoring it.)

He was doing such a good job of ignoring it that when Yong Ha kissed the place where his shoulder met his neck he barely flinched at all. It got harder to ignore when Yong Ha bit him, just barely, right under his jawline. It got even harder when he moved up to his ear.

"This is my dream," Moon Jae Shin said, and breathed slowly, deeply. He closed his eyes and dutifully ignored Yong Ha's hands slipping inside of his robes. "This is my dream."

If this was his dream, why was Yong Ha pulling his robe off his shoulders? If this was his dream, why was Yong Ha's face buried in his neck? If this was his dream, why was it so hard to breathe?

Moon Jae Shin opened his eyes.

Gu Yong Ha, the version of Gu Yong Ha in Jae Shin's head, was right in front of him - on his knees, one hand on the floor for support, the other on Jae Shin's leg. Jae Shin swallowed, but didn't pull away. He was right there. He was right there. He was right there, and then he was even closer, nearly in Jae Shin's lap.

Jae Shin put his hands up defensively, wrapping each palm around one of Yong Ha's thin shoulders, but still he advanced, sliding inch by inch until he was very nearly straddling him. Jae Shin's breath caught in his throat and he tried to focus on anything other than Yong Ha's lips - his throat, the divot between his collar bones, the sheer gold silk over his skin.

"You don't want this," Jae Shin stuttered, trembling hands on Yong Ha's shoulders. He was almost begging now. "Gu Yong Ha. You don't want this. You don't want this. I know you don't want this." He screwed his eyes shut, turned his face downward, shook his head violently as if that would clear it. "Please."

A hand under his chin, pulling his face upward with a gentle pressure he was powerless to resist. Warm breath on his face. The pressure, the weight of another body pushing down on his thighs.

Jae Shin opened his eyes, and Yong Ha kissed him.

 

  
Moon Jae Shin opened his eyes and gasped as the release hit him.

After a few minutes of ragged breathing he was able to collect himself enough to roll over onto his stomach, groaning with the effort. He buried his face in the blanket and tried to catch his breath. It was dark in his room still, even though his large bedroom window stood open, facing the east. Early, then. Maybe so early as to still be late. How long had he slept? Had he even slept at all?

He propped himself up on one elbow, rubbing his eyes with thumb and forefinger. He didn't even need to ask that question, really - the telltale patch of damp left on the blankets was proof enough that he'd slept.

This was getting out of hand.

Jae Shin fell back onto his pillow again and stared up at his ceiling. It had only been two days - maybe three now - since he'd last seen Gu Yong Ha, but he felt haunted by him. It seemed like every time he closed his eyes Yong Ha was there. Even awake it seemed like he was just out of sight, waiting for Jae Shin in the dark.

He let out a long, slow, shuddering breath and closed his eyes. Was this how Lee Seon Joon had felt, back when he still believed Kim Yoon Hee to be a man? Jae Shin almost felt sympathetic now, lying on his bedroom floor alone in the dark, heart still racing, the feel of Yong Ha still on him. Had Lee Seon Joon been able to sleep? When he slept, had he been plagued like this? When he woke up with Kim Yoon Hee next to him, how did he stand it?

It had been different for Jae Shin, knowing she was a woman. Things were tricky, sure, but at least he hadn't started questioning his own masculinity.

Jae Shin closed his eyes, and didn't sleep.

 

  
Lee Seon Joon cleared his throat awkwardly and tipped his head, picking up his tea cup and holding it to his lips but not drinking. He drew in a sharp intake of breath as if preparing to speak. Seemed to think better of it. Sipped his tea. Set down the cup. "Kim Yoon Hee isn't here," he said slowly, in halting tones.

"I know," Moon Jae Shin said, and downed the contents of his tea cup before setting it down on the low table between them.

It was mid morning. They sat together on opposite sides of a low table, a tea pot and two cups between them. Lee Seon Joon's study had good light at this time of day, and it was so bright that they might as well have just been outside. Moon Jae Shin had shown up at his doorstep half an hour ago, dressed haphazardly in something he would have looked at home in years ago at Sungkyunkwan (even though these days he'd been making the effort to look slightly more presentable), and refused to leave until Lee Seon Joon invited him up to his study for tea.

Lee Seon Joon settled back onto the floor pillow he was sitting on, picked up the tea pot, refilled Jae Shin's cup. "So. You look... tired."

Moon Jae Shin just glowered from under eyelids so dark that they looked almost bruised. "I've been..." He glared at the tea in front of him. "... I've been busy," he finished lamely, and picked up his now full tea cup. Downed it again. Set it down and rubbed a hand over his face. "Sorry."

"Is everything all right?" Lee Seon Joon refilled Jae Shin's cup again, and began to realize that he may need more tea in not too long. Did the man realize that it wasn't soju? He was drinking it as though he hoped to get drunk.

"When you thought Kim Yoon Hee was a man -" Jae Shin stuttered to a halt. Grimaced.

"When I thought...?" Lee Seon Joon prompted worriedly, ducking his head a little in a subconscious gesture of submission.

"When you, anyway, Kim Yoon Hee. A man. Right? You know?"

Lee Seon Joon just stared at him guardedly. "Not... really," he said slowly. "She's not, you know. A man," he specified, suddenly feeling as though Moon Jae Shin, in his current state, may require a bit more information than he would normally.

"I know that," Jae Shin barked, then snapped his mouth shut quickly. "Sorry," he mumbled. "I haven't slept very well lately."

"Ah. Well." Lee Seon Joon paused. "Don't think anything of it. It's fine. What were you asking about? Before?"

"When you thought Kim Yoon Hee was a man," Jae Shin stammered out, "how did you deal with it?" He looked up and met Lee Seon Joon's eyes, open wide with - was that worry? fear? - and shook his head violently. "No, I mean, a friend of mine is -"

"Gu Yong Ha?" Lee Seon Joon interjected, and Jae Shin very nearly bit his own tongue off.

"What?" he croaked, after a few seconds of busily trying to regain what little composure he had left.

"Your friend," Lee Seon Joon said, looking less certain by the second. "Is it Gu Yong Ha?"

Jae Shin just stared at him, his sleep-deprived thoughts spinning double time to keep up. Why? How? Out of all the places he could have gone he went to Lee Seon Joon, so sure that Mr Stick-Up-The-Ass Noron (no offense, Lee Seon Joon) of all people wouldn't assume that - "No," he said quickly, catching himself. "No, not... it's another friend."

"You have other friends?"

"Hey!"

"Sorry," Lee Seon Joon said, raising a hand defensively. "I didn't mean... you and Gu Yong Ha are very... I apologize," he finished awkwardly, evidently deciding that no longer speaking was preferable to the alternative. He swallowed. Seemed to consider his options for a moment. Recommitted himself to digging his own grave. "I only ask because he's who I went to."

Jae Shin narrowed his eyes. "What?"

"When I was still under the impression that Kim Yoon Hee was another man," Lee Seon Joon said, gesturing vaguely.

"You went to Gu Yong Ha? For advice?" He let out a quick bark of laughter. "Gu Yong Ha. My Gu Yong Ha? Are we talking about the same person here?" Jae Shin sobered a little at the look of contrition on Seon Joon's face. "Wait, seriously?"

"It just sort of came up," Lee Seon Joon mumbled. Coughed into his fist. "More tea?"

Jae Shin leaned forward and put his hand over his tea cup. "What do you mean he's who you went to? What came up?" He narrowed his eyes. "Oi. Noron. Talk."

"He didn't give me much advice," Lee Seon Joon sputtered quickly, beginning to feel profoundly out of his depth. "He just gave me some, uh. A book. And said that -" what had he said? "- that he'd had the same problem before." He paused, and looked thoughtfully into the depths of his tea cup. "Although I think he knew at the time that I wasn't having that kind of problem at all."

It might have been lack of sleep. It might have been the three quickly-consumed cups of black tea. It might have been a lot of things; regardless of the reason why, Jae Shin felt suddenly as though he wasn't going crazy so much as he had already arrived at crazy days ago. "The same problem," he echoed, his eyes unfocusing slightly. "The same kind of problem."

"Liking men," Lee Seon Joon prompted helpfully.

"The same kind of problem?" Jae Shin mumbled again. He scratched his head roughly and groaned. Shit. Shit. Shit.

"He might be of more help to your... other friend." Lee Seon Joon adjusted awkwardly and cast about for something to focus on. "Gu Yong Ha, I mean."

Moon Jae Shin didn't respond - he just sat still, elbow on his knee, forehead in his hand, staring exhausted at the floor. Maybe on another day, after having slept more the night before, he could think about this properly. But today... today was a wash. His head hurt too much.

"Who was it that gave Gu Yong Ha his problem?" he said, the words coming out of his mouth of their own accord. He wasn't sure what he was going to do with the information once he got it. Hunt them down, whoever it ended up being? Threaten them? Let them know, in no uncertain terms, that anyone who hurt Gu Yong Ha was asking for a world of hurt for themselves? ( _That if I can't make him happy then someone has to_ , whispered a voice in the back of his head.)

"I don't think I should -"

"Just say it, Garang," Jae Shin interrupted, fixing the Noron with a heavy-lidded glare.

Lee Seon Joon opened his mouth. Closed it. Wished fervently that his wife were here to deal with this. Took a deep breath. "You," he said. Flinched, almost imperceptibly. "He said it was you."

 

  
Moon Jae Shin didn't remember walking home.

He didn't remember sitting down to dinner with his father and mother, like he did every night these days.

He didn't remember going to his bedroom. Taking off his jeogeori. Lying down on the floor.

The only thing he could remember was the look on Gu Yong Ha's face when he asked for time.

 

  
Moon Jae Shin opened his eyes.

He was standing in the middle of an empty room, longer than it was wide. No windows - only two sliding rice paper doors at the opposite end. A strange yellow light seemed to come out of the air itself, illuminating everything, and some kind of bright white light shone on the other side of the doors, beaming through the rice paper. There was no sound, not even the sighing of the wind, and he seemed to be absolutely, perfectly alone.

But he wasn't alone, was he?

Despite the length of the room it was only three long, running strides before he reached the door. Grabbed the latch. Slammed it open. Stumbled over the threshold into the next room -

\- only to find it empty.

He stopped cold, staring at the low table in the center of the room. There was a single piece of paper on the table top, a calligraphy brush, an ink block. No floor pillow. No tea cups. No Gu Yong Ha.

Without even moving an inch he was next to the table, staring down at the empty sheet of paper. No strange designs this time. The ink block wasn't even wet. Jae Shin fell to his knees. Reached out for the calligraphy brush. Even in his dreams, Gu Yong Ha was avoiding him. What was so wrong with him that even his best friend couldn't stand to be near him? All he wanted was - it was just - this was too difficult to do by himself. It was too difficult, and Gu Yong Ha was gone.

He just wanted Gu Yong Ha to be by his side. That was it. It wasn't that big of deal, right? It wasn't like he was asking for a marriage, right? It wasn't like he needed anything more than that, right?

He did, though.

Jae Shin inhaled a slow, shaking breath. He did need more than that. He needed to see Yong Ha every day. He needed to find out what Yong Ha's skin felt like. He needed to find out just how many layers Yong Ha wore. He needed to find out what it was like to kiss Yong Ha in real life.

Moon Jae Shin opened his eyes. His room was dark. The window was closed. He was alone and awake.

He waited for morning.

 

  
If you want someone to open their door when you knock, it's generally considered good manners to wait until the sun is up. If you want someone to open their door when you knock and not spend the rest of their life plotting your painful demise, it's generally considered wise to wait, mm, maybe several hours after that. If you want someone to open their door when you knock and then after all of that still let you in, you should probably dress nice. And bring a present.

Moon Jae Shin waited for sunrise, then a little longer, and then even longer still. He dressed nice. He brought a present.

He looked tired, he knew, but under his skin he was on fire - buzzing like a drop of water in a flame. The gate of Gu Yong Ha's father's house stood in front of him, tall and quiet, and somewhere on the other side was Gu Yong Ha. If he closed his eyes he could almost taste the dream that had been chasing him all week; it was the same kind of feeling. A bowl filled with rolling panic in his stomach, lidded tight but still rattling dangerously. Despite the fear, despite feeling wholly incapable of ever catching his breath, he still couldn't keep himself from that door.

So he gave in, and stopped trying to stop himself.

The man who opened the gate to his knock was well-dressed, well-fed, slightly suspicious and just a little bit lopsided. He didn't say anything at first, just peered sleepily around the door.

"Moon Jae Shin." Jae Shin swallowed. "Son of the Minister of Justice."

"I know who you are," the man said. "Here for Gu Yong Ha?"

Jae Shin opened his mouth to bite out something rude, but thought better of it at the last second and just nodded instead.

"He's not here," said the man at the gate, and moved to close the door. "He's already gone."

"What?" Jae Shin stuck his foot in the door so the man couldn't slide it home. "What do you mean, he's already gone?"

"He left for Tamna three days ago." The man sighed, glared at Jae Shin's invading boot, and opened the door a little wider. "The mountains are a little rough this time of year so he's probably still in Chuncheong province."

"Why?" All of the strength was running out of him now. "Why did he go to Tamna?"

The man grimaced. Sighed. Scratched his head. Looked back over his shoulder at someone out of Jae Shin's line of sight, nodded, and turned back to the gate. "He said we weren't supposed to tell you anything," he said, and shrugged.

Moon Jae Shin stared at the door, now closed. He heard the lock slide home, the man's footsteps stomping back into the heart of the compound, and then nothing.


	7. The Chariot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kim Man Deok was a real person, and she was badass. Seriously though. It's very possible that had Gu Yong Ha really existed they may have known each other, have met, or at least known of each other. He almost certainly would have known of her. Seriously though, look her up. A-maz-ing!

"I don't know a lot about horses," Gu Yong Ha said slowly, "but these are very... shiny."

The afternoon was warm and sunny - not hot, just right - and the breeze off the ocean blew through the grass. The palm trees down the hill moved in the wind, seagulls wheeled overhead, only a few clouds sat at the horizon. Funny how he'd left Hanyang in late autumn and arrived in Tamna in what seemed to be summer; it made him feel a little bit turned around, like maybe he'd gone backwards in time, or slept through winter.

"Shiny is a good thing for horses," said the woman at his right hand. She was a head shorter than him, tan skinned, clad in simple but expensive clothing. Her face was old but her eyes were young, and when she grinned at him he felt even more stupid than he already had. "It's not the only thing we look for, but it's a perk."

They stood together (their respective entourages a few meters back, conversing quietly) by the gate of a large fence enclosing a wide grass field. The field was on a plateau overlooking the sea, and from here the sea looked so close - it was over an hour's walk from there, really - that Yong Ha forgot about the horses for just a few moments.

"You're not just here for horses though," the woman said. "I hope not."

Gu Yong Ha remembered himself. Swallowed. Bowed low. "Of course not." He grinned up at her and winked. "Where would the Gu family be, if not for the success and generosity of the esteemed Kim Man Deok?"

Kim Man Deok, esteemed or otherwise, bapped him on the arm. "Don't be ridiculous," she said, showing all of her teeth in a wide-mouthed grin. "Do you really think that's going to work on me?"

"It never has before. Why would it now?" Yong Ha shrugged with one shoulder. "I'd wonder if you were sick."

"Not yet," she said, and inclining her head imperiously, turned and began walking back down the path leading up to the gate. "So are you going to tell me about your recent audiences with the king, or did you only tell me to tease me?"

"Ah," Yong Ha said, and jogged to catch up with her. Kim Man Deok walked as though she owned the world, though maybe here, in this place, that wasn't such a funny thought after all. Her land stretched from far up beyond the horse pasture and breeding stables, far beyond the hilltop to the east, and out to the sea - where she employed any number of haenyeo, diving women, to keep her and her stores well-stocked with seafood, abalone, pearls. "I can't say much," he said, having finally caught up with her.

"Isn't that always the way?" Kim Man Deok's mouth twitched, one corner tweaking upward in a wry facsimile of a smile. "Just once I'd like to see that palace for myself. Could it really hurt that much just to tell me about it? Who would I tell?"

"Don't expect me to believe you're short on important visitors."

"Very little gets past you, Gu Yong Ha."

The path smoothed out here, widening as they neared the Kim mercantile compound. The noise and clatter of dozens of people working, cooking, fighting, living filtered up through the sound of the ocean breeze in the grass, quiet at first but growing louder as they walked closer. If he closed his eyes Yong Ha could almost believe he was still at home in the heart of Hanyang, but the sound of seagulls broke the day dream before it could start.

"So will it be the usual, then?"

Yong Ha came up short. Looked to his side. Realized very quickly that Kim Man Deok had stopped walking with him about six steps ago and was now standing expectantly behind him, hands folded demurely together inside her sleeves. "S-sorry?"

"The usual," she repeated, and cocked her head like a bird, regarding him curiously. "You didn't just come for the horses, you said. Nor to tell me about your recent audiences with the king, although of course," she added indulgently, "one would hope you could find it in your heart to divulge." Kim Man Deok arched her brows. "So. The usual?"

"Well of course I fully intend to take advantage of my time here, but certainly-"

Kim Man Deok shook her head and waved a hand dismissively, walking past him toward her compound gate. "Child," she cautioned as she passed, "one does not become quite so rich with quite so little by being extremely stupid. Come in and join me for dinner." She paused at the gate, allowing it time to open. "Unless you'd like to visit my sisters?"

Yong Ha reddened, swallowed, and followed her meekly through the gate. There were few who could match wits with Kim Man Deok and win, and he was beginning to suspect that he may not count among their number.

The compound was every bit as loud and alive as the center of Hanyang, but - god! - there was a lot more female skin to be found. Gu Yong Ha had been to Tamna before, many times, but he never got used to seeing the groups of nearly naked diving women, still pink and dripping from their time in the sea. They each carried heavy, bulging rope baskets on their backs and talked and laughed as they walked through the crowd of people like kings - a group of them coming off shift, then. The other workers in the wide compound parted for them without a glance, just ducking their heads in deference.

"Stop staring," Kim Man Deok said mildly in his ear. "I know that none of that is new to you."

"But they're just walking around!" he hissed back, trying to keep a straight face. "You just don't -"

"Why shouldn't they?" She glared at him for a moment before giving up and hooting out a huge peal of laughter. "Ah, the look on yangban faces... I never get tired of it. Come, young lord of the North, and accompany me into my hall of safety, free from the prying breasts of the diving women."

"Prying breasts actually sounds very -"

"Oh, shut up," she said, and shoved him up the steps of the main pavilion, across the broad wood plank floor, and ultimately into the central estate.

As cacophonous as the outer compound was, within the walls of Kim Man Deok's personal villa the din seemed to fade into the background until it was very nearly indistinguishable from the sounds of the ocean, the screaming of gulls overhead. Gu Yong Ha released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. The main courtyard was well-tended and beautiful - a stone paved path curving around plants and trees, large stones brought in from the shore. To the east, nearly obscured by the house, he could see the beginning of Kim Man Deok's small personal tangerine orchard. Too early for those, of course, but even at this distance he could almost see the buds beginning to swell in the branches.

For one shining moment they were alone there in the courtyard, just Gu Yong Ha and Kim Man Deok, but when the doors on the main house slammed open and a small army of attendants began pouring out reality came rushing back in with them. "Come along then," Kim Man Deok said, stepping off the wood of the threshold and down onto the stone pathway. "Dinner's waiting."

Gu Yong Ha hesitated at the door, moreso perhaps than he usually did, before following after her into the main house.

 

If you wanted to maintain any kind of trading relationship with the island of Tamna, you needed to make damn sure you were on the good side of Kim Man Deok. Her small empire extended over nearly half the island and most of Joseon's pearls, abalone, and tangerines passed through her very capable hands. Most prominent merchant families sent envoys on an annual basis, typically either going themselves or sending a first or second son.

There was a lot to do on the island. Places to go, things to eat, people to impress. Paperwork to do. Horses to pretend to know things about. And Kim Man Deok, of course - keeping her entertained with stories about the king's palace was a full time job in and of itself.

She had put Gu Yong Ha up in his own small apartment. The outer wall of the compound was more of a long, circular building than an actual wall, and the second story was filled with residential apartments, primarily for merchants and higher ranked members of Kim Man Deok's small empire, but a few reserved specifically for her most important guests. Any member of the Gu family counted as an important guest (Gu Yong Ha silently thanked his father every day for that) so the largest of these was his.

"Largest," of course, was a relative term - a superlative indicating more about the size of the other apartments on the second story of the wall than it did about the actual size of this specific space. It was bigger than his single room at Sungkyunkwan by half, certainly, but less than a third the size of his rooms at his father's house. But the door locked. There was a sliding door separating the sleeping area from a more public one. The furnishings, though well-used, were obviously expensive and incredibly well made. There were two large windows in both spaces and they all faced the sea - with all of them open at the same time he might as well have been on the shore.

The attendants he'd brought with him had bunked down with the rest of Kim Man Deok's household staff, and after only a few days Gu Yong Ha was beginning to wonder if he would be able to convince many of them to come back home to Hanyang with him. Something about a half naked diving woman really did it for most of them.

On the first full day since he had arrived on the shores of Tamna, Gu Yong Ha was greeted in the morning by a group of five young diving women at his door, each with an even wider smile than the last, each wearing very little clothing. Kim Man Deok had, without either his prior knowledge and consent, scheduled him to spend a day in the domain of her haenyeo. When pressed, she said only that it would be good for him to know where his goods came from.

At the end of the day he stumbled back over the threshold of his little apartment. Exhausted, chilled to the bone, soaked with sea spray and smelling not-so-faintly of fish. It took almost all of the energy he had left just to take off his dirtied clothing and change into something fresh, and when he slept he didn't dream.

On the fifth full day since he had arrived on the shores of Tamna, Gu Yong Ha left his small apartment in the morning and was immediately accosted by two men nearly as wide across the shoulders as they were tall, who each laid a hand on one of his shoulders and gently (gently) accompanied him to the field overlooking the sea, where Kim Man Deok herself waited for him, rein and bridle in hand.

"This is how it's going to go, is it?" he asked, smiling in what he hoped was a charming sort of way.

"Yes," Kim Man Deok said, tossing her long, silver-streaked braid over her shoulder. "This is, indeed, how it's going to go."

At the end of the day he didn't walk so much as crawl back to his bed - his back protesting, his legs screaming. Lay down. Slept without dreaming.

On the ninth full day since he had arrived on the shores of Tamna, Gu Yong Ha opened his eyes.

The morning sun shone beams of light across the white plaster ceiling overhead, illuminating every speck of dust in the air. He'd taken to leaving the windows open at night, both for air and for the light in the morning. Sometimes he woke up with the crash of the waves on the shore, sometimes with the sighing of wind through the window frame. Today, though, it seemed silent. The light coming from outside seemed strangely golden yellow.

He sighed and pulled the blanket up over his mouth to hide from the cold. What had woken him up, if not the sound of the wind?

On just the other side of the sliding rice paper door separating his sleeping area from the public space, a page turned.

It was a quiet, nothing sound, almost perfectly ignorable. But it seemed to ring in his ears somehow, carrying him from a light doze straight into utterly awake. He sat up and stared at the closed door, willing the sound to occur again.

After an eternity - another page turned. Quieter this time, if such a thing were possible.

Damn. Damn. Gu Yong Ha threw off the quilt and scuttled to the wardrobe as quietly as possible. Kim Man Deok must have sent someone for him - at this early hour! - to go out on some kind of errand or adventure or, or something else that only she could have dreamed up for him. And last night, of course, he'd even taken off his manggeon before bed, too exhausted to care, too sweaty to tolerate any extraneous fabric touching him in the night. He'd even taken his hair down. Damn. Damn!

Maybe this could work in his favor. He paused, one arm through the sleeve of his yellow housecoat. Glanced at the door. Made his decision.

He'd be sick today. Of course he'd be sick - Kim Man Deok, bless her, hadn't let him off the hook since the moment he'd stepped off the dock. Did she really expect him to be able to do this sort of thing every single day? He grinned and pulled his housecoat down over his shoulders. A loose braid was easy to do, even easier to mess up. The thought of being seen so undone grated a little, sure, but no more than the thought of one more day out in the wilds of Tamna, doing who knows what.

Gu Yong Ha stood up, and took the five, six quick steps it took to bring him to the sliding door. He stood there for a moment, his hand on the latch. Steeled himself. Slid the door open, and stepped out.

The antechamber of his small apartment was almost entirely empty, save for the low table in the middle of the room. He'd left paperwork there the other day, books of sales records and transaction reports. A now-dry ink block lay near the edge of the table, a calligraphy brush precariously balanced on it and very nearly hanging over the floor. (An ink blot stained the floor pillow underneath it. How easy would that be to clean up?)

And sitting at the table, bent over an open book, facing away from the paper-covered doors separating this room from the next - Gu Yong Ha knew that back. That neck, that hair, that lazily confident posture. He'd memorized it over the past decade with such thoroughness that it would put even the most dedicated Confucian scholar to shame. But the sight of it here, now; it chilled him to the bone.

He let out a tiny, almost inaudible sound from the very back of his throat - something between a choked out cough and a sigh - and took one faltering step forward as if to catch himself from falling, as though he had been jerked forward by some unseen force. A swell of embarrassment rose in his gut; of all the people in the world who could be waiting for him here, it was this one? And here he was, standing exposed, undone, his ties untied, his buttons unbuttoned. He could go get dressed. He could take those two steps backward, close the door behind him, take some time to pick up the pieces, put himself back together.

Gu Yong Ha's ears buzzed. He'd been so, so good for the past week, two weeks, three - he'd kept busy, thought about other things, wore himself out to the point of exhaustion so he wouldn't have the opportunity to lie in bed in the dark, staring at the ceiling, alone with his thoughts. And what good had it been, when everything could be shattered like this in just one move?

He walked quietly to the center of the room, barefoot and cautious. His heart hammered and he wondered distractedly if anyone else could hear it. Surely everyone in the compound could hear it, it was so loud. He paused. Sat down. Cleared his throat.

"So, Geol Oh," he said, his voice smooth. "What brings you here to Tamna?"

Moon Jae Shin didn't look up, just slowly, thoughtfully licked his thumb and turned the page. "I could ask you the same thing."

 

  
After stumbling home from the Gu family house, it had taken Moon Jae Shin two and half days to figure himself out.

The dream didn't go away.

Every time he closed his eyes for more than five minutes he was back in that long, bright room with a door at one end. It didn't matter how many times he went through that door - the next room was always empty. He'd always turn around. The door behind him would always have disappeared, and always a door would have appeared on the other side of the table. And so it would go all night, him walking around in circles, living in hope that maybe this time Gu Yong Ha would be just on the other side of the next door.

He'd been so sure when he'd woken up that night. He'd known exactly what he needed to do. There was no hint of doubt, no crack in his resolve. Just the solid, unwavering faith that he would stand in front of Gu Yong Ha and everything would sort itself out in the end. It had to. But it didn't (because of course it hadn't) so he was left lying on the floor of his bedroom staring at the ceiling until he slept, and when he slept he dreamed of walking in circles.

It didn't feel like he was thinking. It didn't feel like he was doing anything. His head was filled with static. But even so, on the third day he got up off the floor. He took off his two day old clothes. He took a bath, he combed his hair. He packed a bag. He took a horse. When the moon rose, he left.

By the time he'd left Hanyang he'd already worked out that while it may have taken a large party maybe... eight days? to travel from Hanyang to Tamna, a lone horseman who knew how to take care of himself in the wilderness could probably make it just fine in only six. Arguably, he wasn't exactly a lone horseman who knew how to take care of himself in the wilderness - more a lone horseman that wouldn't immediately die when subjected to such indignities as cold, rain, and sleeping on the ground. Even so, he made a silent bet with himself that he could make it to the docks of Tamna in six days.

He made it in five.

 

"Well," Gu Yong Ha said hesitantly, then paused, head spinning. What should he say next? Was there a right thing to say? "I have business here," he finished, feeling exceptionally foolish. "But why are you here?"

"I went to your father's house," Jae Shin said, biting off the words. He still hadn't looked up. "They told me you'd gone to Tamna."

"Well," Yong Ha said again. Paused, again. "I did. I don't see how -"

"They told me you didn't want me to be told anything," Jae Shin said, and this time the note of accusation in his voice swelled as he finally rose his face to glare at Yong Ha. He'd felt betrayed but until this moment he hadn't realized just how much - he'd been too focused on just... getting there, seeing Gu Yong Ha face to face. Saying something. Saying anything. Moon Jae Shin hissed in a quick breath, words piling up on the top of his tongue, ready to fling accusations and throw barbs, glanced up to look Gu Yong Ha in the eye, and -

"... Wait, what?" Yong Ha gaped for a second. "They said what?"

\- and Gu Yong Ha looked exactly, exactly, exactly the way he had when Jae Shin had dreamed about him. Forehead bare. Black hair tied back loosely in one braid. A golden housecoat with white lapels, untied and open. Nothing underneath but his trousers. Even the light was the same: the sun was shining behind his head, forming a halo in his hair and illuminating every golden speck of dust. Jae Shin had thought that the sound of Gu Yong Ha calm and confused was a punch in a gut, but this was worse. He lost his train of thought. His focus. His breath.

"That you didn't want me to be told anything," Jae Shin repeated, his voice faltering a little over the words. He was staring at Yong Ha, eyes flickering from his forehead, to his braid, to his bare chest under his yellow housecoat. "Did you... did you want to put some clothes on?"

"They said what?" Yong Ha groaned and rubbed a hand over his face. "I told them not to tell you anything that would _worry_ you. Because I didn't want you to _worry_."

But no, he was different, wasn't he? He wasn't exactly like he'd been in the dream. God, he looked so tired, almost as though he were still half asleep. Lines under his eyes. Worry between his eyebrows. In the dream he'd been silent but unafraid. "Why aren't you dressed?" Jae Shin cleared his throat and stared fixedly down at the book he'd been reading. "Are you sick?"

"I mean, honestly, what's the use of even having servants if they're not even going to follow simple... what?" Yong Ha paused, Jae Shin's words finally filtering through. He reddened and tucked his housecoat tighter over his chest. "Sorry. I mean.. kind of. Not really. I'm not sick."

Somewhere a long ways off a roll of thunder sounded. A gust of wind rattled the paper-covered window pane. Yong Ha turned to look over his shoulder, tossing his braid back to lay between his shoulder blades, and sighed irritably before standing and pulling the windows closed. "A whole nine days and not even a rain drop," he sighed, reaching out far to grab hold of the window pane's edge. "Then you show up and there's a storm."

When he turned, brushing the dust off his hands, Jae Shin was staring at him. Yong Ha swallowed and tucked his housecoat even tighter around himself, feeling his heart begin to beat fast again. "What?"

"So do you live here now?" Jae Shin blurted out, then quickly closed his mouth again.

"What?" Yong Ha managed. "I don't - what do you - no, I don't live here," he sputtered out. "I'm only here for ten days. I'm here on business." He paused. "Temporarily."

"Oh," Jae Shin said. Opened his mouth. Closed his mouth.

"Is that why you came?" Yong Ha said quietly, slowly. He padded back to the table and sat down again. Folded his hands in his lap. Looked down at the mess on the table top. "How did you get into my apartment anyway?"

At this, Jae Shin grinned shyly and shrugged with one shoulder. "I'm the red messenger."

"No." Yong Ha's jaw dropped. "I'm on the second story! Did you really..."

"The gate was closed," Jae Shin said, and shrugged again. "I didn't feel like explaining myself."

"Idiot, this whole compound is locked down," Yong Ha groaned. "I don't see why you couldn't have just sent a message, or -"

"I missed you," Jae Shin stuttered. He looked down at Yong Ha's hands in his lap. "I wanted to see you. I didn't know if you were gone for good, or why you left. I was... I was scared," he admitted, and looked up into Yong Ha's face. "That you weren't coming back. I thought I was going to go crazy, or -"

"Going to go crazy?" Yong Ha whapped him on the arm. "Going to go crazy? You - you punk! You already have gone crazy! Who in their right mind-" But then Jae Shin's hand was around his wrist.

"All right," Jae Shin gasped, "I'm not in my right mind. I admit it. Are you happy now?"

Yong Ha stared at him, hand still raised, Jae Shin's warm fingers around his wrist. His pulse jumped, his mouth went dry. This wasn't good. This wasn't good. Here he was, unarmored and exposed, none of his protections up, and Jae Shin was - Jae Shin was staring at him, unblinking, breathing just a little bit hard, not letting go. Not letting go. "Let go," he whispered.

"Do you want me to?" Jae Shin said quietly.

No. "Yes."

"I'll let go if you want me to." Quieter this time. A note in his voice sounded almost like pleading.

Yong Ha focused on Jae Shin's hand around his wrist, trying to think through the sound of his heartbeat pounding hard in his ears. "What do you want?" he asked slowly.

Another roll of thunder sounded outside, closer this time, so close as to rattle the windows a little in their frames. The hissing, whispering noise of rain coming down in sheets. A breath of wind, shaking the walls of the compound just slightly.

"I just want to be next to you," Jae Shin said.

And then Gu Yong Ha's mouth betrayed him. "Is that all you want?" he murmured, and hoped, hoped, hoped that was all he wanted. (Prayed, prayed, prayed he wanted something more.)

"No," Jae Shin breathed, and pulled.

Maybe it was the sound of thunder. Maybe somewhere a window pane slammed closed. Maybe the wind shook the compound walls so hard that it only felt like the earth was moving under him. Whatever it was, Yong Ha didn't care. When Jae Shin pulled his wrist he very nearly landed in his lap, one hand on the edge of the table for balance. Then his wrist was free and Jae Shin's hand was on his waist instead. Yong Ha gasped for breath and tried to focus on anything but Jae Shin's eyes - his hair, his throat, his lips - but quickly discovered that anything was just as bad as everything else. He closed his eyes instead and tried to catch his breath.

"I had a dream like this once," Yong Ha said, and hated himself for it.

Jae Shin laughed once, quietly. "So have I."

There was a knock at the door.

Both of their heads swung around in unison as they both froze in place. Recognition of how ridiculous this looked washed over Yong Ha like a bucket of cold water - here he was, practically half naked in only his baji and a housecoat, almost straddling his best friend, who... who looked like a bandit right now, honestly, was he really wearing that old black and gray getup he used to wear out as the red messenger? Jae Shin wasn't even supposed to be here. He hadn't been cleared by the guards at the gate. He hadn't had an audience with Kim Man Deok. No, he'd climbed in through the window, of course. Of course.

For the thousandth time since arriving on the shores of Tamna, Gu Yong Ha thanked anyone who might be listening that Kim Man Deok had given him an apartment with a lock on the door.

"Yes?" he said, his voice hoarse.

"Kim Man Deok requests an audience," said a voice from the other side of the door.

Jae Shin opened his mouth and Yong Ha slapped his hand over it, shaking his head violently. "Don't even think about it," he hissed. Louder, he called out: "Please let her know that I'll be a few minutes, as I... as I've only just woken." Jae Shin made a face behind his hand, but Yong Ha made an even worse face back and Jae Shin stilled.

"Yes, sir." Footsteps receding, and then nothing.

"Fuck," Yong Ha gasped, and slumped forward, resting his forehead on Jae Shin's shoulder. "You're not supposed to be here."

"I can still leave the way I -" Jae Shin started, but Yong Ha sat up ramrod straight and shook a furious forefinger under his nose.

"You are not leaving," he whispered fiercely. "It's coming down hard out there, I'm not going to let you go out there and... I'm just, I'm not going to let you." He swallowed. "You remember the last time we got caught out in the rain. What if you get sick again and I'm not around to nurse you back to health?"

"You ended up ruining a perfectly good outfit for me after all," Jae Shin said.

Yong Ha colored. "Stop it. Stop it! I have to get dressed, I only have a few minutes. You..." he trailed off, and looked over his shoulder at his sleeping space, the door pulled close. "You stay here," he finished, and stood. "I'll be right back."

And then he was gone, and Moon Jae Shin was alone again - in a room longer than it was wide.

  
**-**  
**Fifteen Weeks Previous**  
**-**

There was a knock at the door and then only a moment before it creaked open. A single, worried eye peered around the door frame.

Gu Yong Ha looked up. "Yes?"

"Ah..." The landlord on the other side of the door coughed nervously. "Ah. Ah, my lord, the room..."

"Right, right," Yong Ha sighed, waving a hand. "Don't worry. It's understood. Don't worry about him -" Moon Jae Shin was still dead asleep on the other side of the other table "- I'll take care of him as well. We'll be out soon enough."

The door closed after a second of hesitant consideration. Yong Ha allowed himself a long, slow exhalation once the landlord's footsteps had receded down the corridor. It would take quite a bit of work to get Moon Jae Shin up, and even more to actually get him awake, and he wasn't looking forward to it. He was alarmingly hung over and even in the middle of the night it had never really cooled down much so he was just... he was baking, is what he was. Baking and sweaty and horrible, and this soju tasted like green onion pancake.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stared blearily down at the table.

One more card.

He sighed, looked up at the ceiling, shrugged, and flipped the card.

"The Chariot?" he said, and made a face. "That's ridiculous." He was worse at this whole fortunetelling thing than even Moon Jae Shin could have predicted.

 **-**  
**The Present**  
**-**

It had taken Moon Jae Shin about twenty minutes to figure out where Gu Yong Ha had gone, an hour to find the exact location of Kim Man Deok's mercantile compound, a day and a half to work out where Gu Yong Ha was staying, and exactly twenty-nine hours to figure out what he was going to do about it.

In his small room over the tavern a few streets over from the compound, Moon Jae Shin dressed all in black. The night outside was dark, the air heavy. In an hour the sun would peek over the horizon to the east. He had to work fast. He'd cased the compound the day before and it wasn't a complex construction - a two story building built round like a bowl, acting as a huge, thick wall for the space within. Buttresses extended at first story height, rafters bent to a second purpose - it was kind of them, making it easy for him to scale the wall.

Maybe it was because it had been too long since he'd last stood on a rooftop. Maybe it was his bad ankle. Maybe it was the five days of hard travel and then hours on the ferry getting seasick. Whatever it was, he barely made it through the open window before the sun came up.

The dim light of sunrise barely illuminated the room, but it was enough. A low square table sat in the middle, scattered with papers, thin books of records. A dry ink block near the edge, its brush so close to dropping onto the floor Jae Shin nearly felt compelled to pick it up. Scattered floor pillows, knocked about and in complete disarray. The mess drove a knife of doubt through his chest. Maybe this wasn't Gu Yong Ha's room. Maybe he'd wandered into a different apartment, with someone else's mess. Yong Ha would never have left things like this. He couldn't have changed that much in the few years since leaving Sungkyunkwan. Could he have?

A sighing sound came from behind him, and he turned slowly, deliberately to face the closed paper door leading to the next room. Jae Shin swallowed. Pulled up his sleeves. Took four cautious steps. Pulled open the door.

Sunlight peeked over the window frame, slicing a long thin horizontal stripe on the wall across from the open windows. The mattress on the floor was disheveled with the movements of a particularly violent sleep, the bright green and orange quilt twisted twice in the middle but still covering the person in the bed. Black hair, long and untied, lay harsh and dark against the white cotton.

It was Gu Yong Ha, but in a way Moon Jae Shin had never seen before - lips slightly parted, breathing heavy, eyes exhausted. The quilt was pulled up to his chin, his bare feet splayed out at the bottom. Jae Shin exhaled slowly (relief, maybe, or fear all over again), bit his lips together, and slid the door closed. He stood there for quite some time, his hand still on the latch. Maybe this wasn't a good idea. Maybe it definitely wasn't. Maybe this was a terrible idea. Maybe he should just leave now, leave Gu Yong Ha to his new life, maybe they could just move on and be all right in different places. Maybe. Maybe.

Moon Jae Shin closed his eyes and took a deep breath before turning slowly and sitting down at the short table in the middle of the room. There was a stack of books on the other side of the table, piled haphazardly - no concern expended on putting the larger books at the bottom, the smaller on top. He reached over and picked up the stack. Flipped through the books until he found something that he suspected may not bore him to tears. Opened it up.

After nearly an hour of staring at the open pages, eventually the words started getting through and he actually started reading it. The sun was higher now and the light bounced off the white plaster walls, lighting up the room with a strangely golden light. A little bright for reading, but good enough. He turned the page.

A sound. A shuffle of blankets. Then silence.

Moon Jae Shin sat up a little straighter, barely breathing. Listened for something. Listened for anything. Turned another page.

A moment, and then the sound of quilts. A drawer being opened. Footsteps belonging to someone who was focusing every ounce of their energy on being as quiet as possible. A shuffling noise, strangely extended for more than a minute. Then quiet.

Footsteps.

And the door, sliding open with a nearly inaudible hiss.

Moon Jae Shin closed his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two more chapters! Edits should finish up this weekend.


	8. The Magician

She would understand, right? She had to understand that it would take him a few minutes to get himself put together. Gu Yong Ha pulled a brush through his hair firmly, almost violently, before tugging it all upward and twisting it into a top knot. He could do this in his sleep, of course, but when he had a deadline his hands shook and everything took twice as much care, twice as much time.

The manggeon went on, tied back firmly. She wouldn't notice if his baji were the same as the day before. Jeogeori, overcoat, stockings, layer by layer by layer. Every other day this felt like he was tying himself down, keeping himself in, but right now he felt as though nothing he could do would get himself laced up. He was going to say the wrong thing. He was going to do the wrong thing.

The door slid open behind him, and he spun, panicked. Moon Jae Shin stood awkwardly in the doorway, looking like he wasn't sure what to do with his hands, where to look, how to stand. "Do you need any -"

"Damn it." Yong Ha sprang to his feet and was next to him in a half a second, grabbing his upper arm in an iron grip. "This is serious. You need to stay in this apartment. Don't move. Don't speak. Don't light a match, don't turn a page, don't even go out into the antechamber. Stay here. Lie down if you have to."

He moved to go past him but Jae Shin caught his shoulder as he walked past. "How long do I have to wait?"

Yong Ha opened his mouth. Hesitated. Looked at the floor, then up into Jae Shin's face. "I don't know," he said. "Just please, stay here."

The door slid home. Gu Yong Ha left the apartment in such a hurry that he very nearly forgot his shoes and had to double back to slip them on. Outside the door of his small apartment the walkway looked out onto the compound, every inch of it soaked with rain. Only a few people ran back and forth from cover to cover.

He whistled a long, low, descending note and silently thanked Kim Man Deok for having the forethought to build a back way into her personal villa from the upper apartments that stayed under cover the whole way. It took longer than it would have had he just run down the steps and cut across the main square, but that way he'd end up in her house soaked to the bone and dripped on her floors. Even with the added distance it was still only a few minutes before he was bowing past her attendants and being ushered in to her private study, and he ended up arriving there dry.

When he entered, Kim Man Deok didn't look up from the sheet of paper she was working on. He cleared his throat nervously and sat down across from her at the low table, bowing his head low. "You sent for me," he said.

"So I did," she said mildly. "Just a moment." A quick dab of her brush on the ink block, a few swipes on the paper... she nodded. "There's that done. So, my young Gu Yong Ha. How are you?"

Gu Yong Ha opened his mouth and reddened. "I'm doing well," he managed, folding his hands in his lap. "You've certainly kept me very busy."

"Yes," she said, and grinned at him. "You noticed."

"Couldn't help but notice."

"Let me fill you in on a secret, dear," she said, and beckoned to him. He leaned forward. "I know you."

Yong Ha jerked back. "Sorry?"

Kim Man Deok threw her head back and laughed. "You're just like your father sometimes, do you know that? Listen - I would have been hard-pressed to get this business off the ground if it weren't for your family taking a chance on me. Do you know that?"

He inclined his head as if to concede that yes, he did in fact have an inkling that this was the case.

"Did you also know that you only come here alone when you're trying to get away from a problem?"

"I -"

"Oh, don't," Kim Man Deok said, waving a hand. "I said, I know you. You've been coming here for twenty years. I watched you grow up." She paused, and peered at him curiously. "I was going to have you go out on the boats today, but the storm rolled in, and well... not so much."

"Not so much," he repeated faintly. Boats! Of all things, why did it have to be boats?

"But it's your last day here, and supposedly you're here for both business and pleasure, so I suppose it wouldn't hurt to give you the day off." She picked up her calligraphy brush with a note of finality, then paused. "You know, you can't run away forever."

Gu Yong Ha blinked. "Sorry?"

"From your problems," Kim Man Deok said, turning her attention down to the papers on the desk in front of her. "One of these days they're going to follow you, and even Tamna won't be far enough to get away. They'll follow you, even here." She glanced up, and smiled at him. "Take it from me, dear. I've lived a lot longer than you."

He felt too cold and too hot at the same time. She couldn't know. She couldn't know. Did she know? How would she know? "Of course," he said. "I, ah..."

"You can go," she said, and waved a hand, not looking up this time. "Sleep in. Read something. If the storm lets up try going into town - it's not the compound, but it's still interesting in its own way."

He didn't remember standing up. He didn't remember bowing, or leaving the room, or walking through the house. He didn't even remember leaving the villa, only realizing that he'd walked out uncovered once he was back under the protection of the over-arching compound walls. Yong Ha took a deep breath and wiped the spattered rain drops from his face with a hand. He'd been right, then: he couldn't be laced up, not today. No armor, no protection.

The storm raged overhead. The wood panels rattled. Mud sprayed up with the force of the rain. Lightning lit up the compound's main square and then thunder rolled immediately after, so loud and rough that he could feel it in his bones. Even the hardest-working of Kim Man Deok's underlings were under cover now, waiting out the storm.

Moon Jae Shin was waiting in his small apartment. Moon Jae Shin, always his biggest problem, had finally followed him all the way to Tamna. In hindsight, Kim Man Deok was right - he'd always come here when he had something to get away from. And she had always, always kept him so busy he couldn't think. Had it always been so intentional? Had she always seen everything in his face when he showed up at her gates?

He paused outside his own door. Waited to catch his breath. Moon Jae Shin was just on the other side. Moon Jae Shin. Moon Jae Shin. Gu Yong Ha screwed his eyes shut and rubbed both palms furiously over his face. Nothing had changed! Everything was fine! He could just open the door and send for some soju and they could... they could talk. Joke around. Everything was fine. Nothing had changed.

He laid his hand on the latch. Took a deep breath. Pushed the door open.

Everything had changed.

The table in the center of his small antechamber had been tidied. The ink block had been washed and dried and put up on a shelf next to a jar full of calligraphy brushes. His books and papers had been stacked neatly. The floor pillows had been puffed up and piled carefully against the wall. Even the ink spot on the floor was gone, or at least significantly improved.

A knot of ice formed in Gu Yong Ha's stomach. Of course. Of course, this happened every day after he left. It was normally one of his favorite things about staying in Kim Man Deok's compound, the way a servant would come in quietly after he'd left in the morning and tidy everything up. Pick up small messes. Put everything back in its place. They would even fold up his sleeping mat and blankets.

His sleeping mat and blankets.

Shit.

Gu Yong Ha kicked off his shoes in the entry so quickly that he very nearly fell flat on his face on the floor, only barely managing to catch himself. His soaked hanbok was heavy on his skin but somehow he felt almost weightless with panic. He scrambled for the handles of the sliding door separating this room from the next. Steeled himself. Pushed them open.

The room was empty. His sleeping mat and blankets had, indeed, been folded up and put away in the cupboard. The mess he'd left on the wardrobe had been tided. The windows he had left open were closed and latched.

He took two, three, four cautious steps into the room. (The floor was still damp underfoot. The rain had come in the open windows.) The cupboard was too small. The wardrobe too low. There was nowhere to hide.

"Moon Jae Shin?" he whispered into the darkness. Maybe he had dreamed it. Maybe he really had only just woken up. Maybe -

"Could you open the window?"

The voice was so quiet, muffled, almost drowned out by the crush of the storm. But it was there. Yong Ha heard it. It wasn't a dream. He wasn't dreaming. Three steps took him to the window, where he struggled with the latch for an eternity before finally getting it unhooked and slamming the window pane open. The wind blew rain into the room but he didn't care. "You idiot!" he yelled. "What were you thinking?"

Moon Jae Shin, hanging from his upper arms off a buttress just below the open window, grinned up at him. "When do I ever think? You should know this by now!"

Between the two of them it only took a few minutes to get Jae Shin back up the wall, over the window frame, into the room, onto the floor. Gu Yong Ha slammed the window closed after a short struggle with the wind and latched it forcefully before his legs collapsed under him and he dropped to the floor next to Jae Shin. "Idiot," he said again, breathlessly this time.

Jae Shin was lying on his back, soaked to the bone, his hair plastered on one cheek, gasping for breath but still grinning. "Somebody came in," he said between gasps. "What else was I supposed to do?"

Gu Yong Ha fell against the wall under the window and stared at him, his breath finally starting to come a little easier. "Good point," he mumbled eventually, and stood, wiping his face with his sleeve. He stepped over Jae Shin's prone form and made his way over to the wardrobe. "I'm not letting you get sick again," he said, opening the top drawer and staring at its contents distractedly for a few seconds before pulling out a few pieces of clothing.

When he turned back around, Jae Shin was standing upright and dripping on the hardwood floor, his breath still rough, the fabric of his jacket clinging to his skin. Yong Ha unconsciously took a step backward and clutched the folded clothing to his chest like a shield. Jae Shin extended a hand, palm up. Yong Ha's breath caught in his throat.

Jae Shin opened his mouth. "Hey. You're getting the dry clothes damp."

And just like that the spell was broken. Yong Ha coughed out a laugh and rolled his eyes, tossing the armful of fabric at Jae Shin. "You're the worst."

Jae Shin caught most of it, barely - a jeogeori fluttered nearly to the floor, held only by the end of one sleeve. "The worst? After I hung out a window for you?"

"That was for you," Yong Ha commented, turning back to the wardrobe to dig out something for himself. "I don't know what Kim Man Deok would do to you if you were caught in here, but -" He paused. "- no, I think I do know. And I'd rather not think about it very much, thank you." He pulled out a few lengths of gold silk and pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Do you think it's too late in the year for yellow?"

No response. He looked over his shoulder. Jae Shin was still standing in the same place, still holding the clothing, still letting the jeogori drag on the floor, still dripping. Still looking at him. Yong Ha grinned nervously. "Yes?"

Jae Shin shook his head and busied himself with the clothing in his hands. "Nothing. I don't know." His grasp on the errant jeogeori slipped and it fluttered to the ground. "Um."

Yong Ha sighed and dropped the gold silk in his hands, letting it fall loose over the side of the drawer. "Honestly." He knelt and picked up the plain white jeogeori, inspecting it as he stood back up again. "It's still clean, and it didn't get very wet even though you've been dripping all over the place." He glanced up into Jae Shin's face and grinned, placing the jeogeori back in his friend's hands. "Should be fine to wear, if only as a temporary fix. Now get changed, will you? I have to figure out how to sneak you out of here."

He turned back to the wardrobe but Jae Shin moved forward (with that light, quick step that had always kept him alive) and caught him on the arm. It was just a touch, really - not a grab, not a tug. Just a touch, so light that Yong Ha almost didn't feel the pressure of it on his skin. Yong Ha looked down at Jae Shin's hand for only half a second before it was yanked back again, then peered up into Jae Shin's face. He'd seen that look before, but never pointed in his direction. It was that odd combination of white-knuckled courage and knee-buckling terror that Yong Ha hadn't seen in his expression since... since only a few months ago, actually, in Moran-gak. Yong Ha blinked. Maybe it had been pointed in his direction before, but he just hadn't recognized it.

"What?" he said, because for once he couldn't think of anything better to say. How was it that Jae Shin could strike him dumb like this? No one else could quite so consistently blow the words right out of him with only a look.

"I'm trying to figure out the words," Jae Shin said quickly. Then made a face, the combination of courage and terror in his face overbalancing into something that was much closer to fear, confusion, self-loathing. "I don't know how to... how to talk to you."

"You've never had a problem before," Yong Ha said, but knew as soon as the words left his mouth that that wasn't quite right, was it?

"I've never known how to talk to you," Jae Shin insisted, taking an involuntary step forward. "I've never had to. You've never made me have to. You've always worked things out first and then... and then presented it to me, on a silver platter. You've always done the talking. You're good at it. I'm not."

Yong Ha shot him a lopsided grin, trying not to let anything show on his face. The gat strings were cutting at his throat and his hand rose of its own volition to fumble with the knot. "Oh, I don't know... your poetry has always been top notch."

"That's not what I -" Jae Shin inhaled sharply and looked at the floor, the wall, anything that wasn't Yong Ha. This was the morning of Kim Yoon Hee's wedding all over again. He knew exactly what he wanted to say down in his gut, but his head was empty and just looking at Yong Ha's face (his throat, his wrists, his hands working at the soaked gat strings, trying to get them loose) made every muscle in his back flex and strain with a kind of anxiety he hadn't felt in years. Every tendon was wound tight, every muscle tense and ready to run. Fight or flight. Fight or flight.

Fight. Fight!

"Do you remember when you, when you drank so much," Jae Shin said, "that Moran-gak sent out their runner to fetch an attendant from your father's house?"

"You came instead," Yong Ha breathed. The knot came loose but his hand stayed motionless at his throat, the strings still held between his fingertips.

"And you were so drunk!" Jae Shin barked a laugh, shook his head, the look in his eyes one of disbelief. "You were so drunk, I had to carry you home. And you're so light - did you know that? You're so light. I remember thinking that carrying you was like carrying a bunch of kindling wrapped in a silk sheet." He rubbed a palm over his face, his forehead, pushing his hair out of his eyes. "You were so light. And you had passed out in the street but you woke up and you, you made me promise to help you with something but you wouldn't say what. You wouldn't tell me what it was for weeks."

"I was embarrassed," Yong Ha said, and swallowed. Tried to grin. Couldn't quite manage it. "It was embarrassing."

"It was embarrassing but I did it anyway because you're... because you're my friend." Jae Shin took a deep breath. Bit his lips together. "Because you're my best friend. Because I knew - I know - that you would've done the same for me."

Yong Ha slowly reached up for the brim of his gat and took it off gently, water streaming from it as it tipped. "You wouldn't have had to ask for the same thing. You wouldn't have done that kind of thing."

"I would have done worse. I have done worse. I've never even had to ask and you've always -" Jae Shin stopped again and grimaced. "You've always done what you felt needed to be done. And that's, I'm, I'm grateful, and I don't know if I've ever thanked you enough for it, or if... or if I'll ever be able to thank you enough for it. But that's not - you always do this," he sighed. "You always do this to me."

"Do what?"

"Drive me crazy," Jae Shin said, the words coming out without him thinking about them first. His mouth hung open, just for a second, before he snapped it shut again. "I remember being so irritated," he said, focusing on the ties on the front of Yong Ha's hanbok. "You know how much I hate dressing up. You know I swore that I'd never set foot in Moran-gak. You know."

"I know," Yong Ha murmured, watching his face.

"But I did," Jae Shin said, "and I did it for you. But then you, you were..."

"... kind of terrible?" Yong Ha hazarded, wincing a little. "Look, I know that my skill with the gayageum is beyond lacking, but -"

"You were incredible," Jae Shin said, and his chest tightened. Yong Ha's eyes went wide and every muscle in Jae Shin's body tried to run away. "You were... you were terrifying. I don't know if I've ever been as afraid as I was when that door opened and you looked at me and you were - I remember when you were ten years old," he stuttered, squeezing his eyes shut. "I was twelve and you had just turned ten and you were this little smartass kid who wouldn't stop following me around -"

"Oh, thanks," Yong Ha managed.

"- shut up," Jae Shin continued, opening his eyes again just to fix Yong ha with a glare, "and I know it's terrible but I've always had that idea of you in the back of my head, my shadow, the kid brother I never had, you were it. The closest thing. So when you asked for help I was there. I got fitted for a hanbok. I set foot in Moran-gak. I went to your parlor, and I stayed for two hours."

"And not one minute more."

"Would you have stayed?"

Yong Ha blinked. "What?"

Jae Shin waved a hand in the air wordlessly, tongue-tied for a moment. "I don't mean that the way it sounds," he said, finally, desperately.

"Then how did you mean it?" It wasn't really a question so much as it was a challenge.

"I mean that I couldn't... I couldn't -" Outside, thunder crashed and rolled, and the floor under them shook. "- I couldn't think of you as my shadow anymore. I didn't know what to think. Just the sight of you, exactly the way you've always been but so, so different. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. You almost took off your jeogeori and I couldn't... I couldn't," Jae Shin finished stupidly. He stared at Yong Ha. "I told you that I'm no good at talking."

"You're all right at talking," Yong Ha said, "but I don't know what you're trying to say."

"I couldn't think of you as my shadow anymore," Jae Shin said again, tasting the words. "You didn't fit that space in my head. Every time I saw you after that, every time I talked to you, every time you laughed at me or made a joke, it was like... like you were making your own space all of a sudden. For months, months, I couldn't figure you out. I couldn't figure out what the space was that you were making in my head. But then you stopped coming around and I couldn't figure out why and when I asked you about it you just said that you needed time and then -" He just stopped there, a little out of breath, and stared at Yong Ha for a few seconds. "Then you were gone," he said, and the note of - what was it? betrayal? - in his voice was like a punch in the gut.

"Just for business," Yong Ha started to say, shrugging with one shoulder and trying on a grin, "I mean, it's not like -"

"I didn't know how long you'd be gone," Jae Shin insisted. "They wouldn't tell me. They wouldn't tell me anything. I couldn't let you just leave without..." And then stopped, mouth open.

The room seemed so vast around them. Yong Ha felt as though the walls were miles away, that he was standing alone with Moon Jae Shin in the middle of a huge and empty landscape. Just them, not even an arm's length apart, surrounded by nothingness. "Without what?" The words echoed, but maybe it was just in his head.

"Without telling you about the space you've made in my head," Jae Shin said, and his fists relaxed and uncurled. He looked at the floor between them, not quite focusing on the drops of water they'd left on the wood but not able to look at anything else either. "I don't want to... I don't want to burden you with this," he mumbled, his fists closing again. "But I couldn't just let you go away without telling you."

"Without telling me what?" Yong Ha's ears were buzzing now, the steady thump of his heartbeat shaking him to the bone. "Say it. Say it out loud."

"I like you." Shit. "I can't stop thinking about you." Shit! "You made a space for yourself in my head and now there's only room for you. I can't think about anything else. Some nights I go to sleep and I dream about you, other nights I go to sleep and I dream about missing you. And I know that maybe, maybe a long time ago, maybe not at all, I don't know -" Jae Shin inhaled a shaking breath and passed a palm over his forehead "- maybe you might have thought about me in almost the same way."

Rain beat against the windows. The distance between them seemed to yawn. Jae Shin took a faltering step back. "If that wasn't right, I'm sorry. I'll go. Just let me know and I'll go and give you all the time you need, even if... even if you don't want to see me anymore. That's all right. I understand."

Everything was upside down, inside out. Remember once upon a time, when Geol Oh spoke better with his fists than he did with his words? When Yeorim could never be rendered speechless, always ready with a witty quip, a sharp observation? Remember? Remember when? Gu Yong Ha couldn't remember anymore. He couldn't remember anything. He couldn't think. He didn't want to think. His head buzzed. His fists clenched of their own accord. His skin pricked, the fine hairs on his arms stood on end.

Maybe it was the storm. Maybe it was the lightning. Maybe it was the cold, the wet silk against his skin. Maybe it was Moon Jae Shin, standing tall and square-shouldered in front of him, scared as hell but facing down his fate head-on despite the odds. Moon Jae Shin, standing unsteady with his stocking feet set slightly apart as if for balance, the cotton of his clothes still soaked and clinging to his skin, his hair worn long and plastered to his neck and throat. Moon Jae Shin, wide eyed, tense. Moon Jae Shin. Moon Jae Shin.

Gu Yong Ha took one step forward. Two steps. Three, until he was within reach of Jae Shin, and extended shaking hands to reach out and touch his shoulders. Yong Ha took a slow, deep, unsteady breath and wordlessly hooked two fingers under the lapel of Jae Shin's topmost robe. Pulled, just a little. "Your clothes are wet." The words came out like a prayer, a whisper, a breath of wind in the crush of the storm. "Your clothes are wet."

Jae Shin flinched, looked down at Yong Ha's hand on his chest, inhaled sharply. "Didn't you hear what I said?"

"I heard." He didn't have anything to say. He didn't have words. For once, Gu Yong Ha didn't have words. All he had was Moon Jae Shin's robe between thumb and fingers. So he pulled again, harder this time, and Jae Shin took a step forward with confusion on his face. "Your clothes are still wet."

"Don't you have anything to say?"

"I don't know," Yong Ha mumbled, and pulled the ties of Jae Shin's jeogeori loose before carefully, gently, tentatively taking hold of the lapels and pushing them back over Jae Shin's shoulders.

How many times had they stood this close, arguing over whatever small thing, bickering like kids, changing out of night clothes and into something fitting for a yangban son? How many times had he been the only one there to see the marks and scars on Jae Shin's skin, had looked away to focus on anything else so that he could keep grinning despite it? How many times had they been this close?

The jeogeori slid slowly down Jae Shin's arms and hit the floor with a wet thud, splattering water a few feet in every direction. His skin was still wet, slick and shining in the dim light coming through the papered windows. Yong Ha reached out a hand and touched his chest - the slashed wound from two years ago, diagonal over his pectorals, had healed rough and ugly despite the extreme care he'd taken. The damn fool had had to run off, of course, to do something noble or whatever, and ended up tearing open all of Yong Ha's hard work. And now look at him.

And now look at him.

Yong Ha looked at Jae Shin. At his callused hands. His wrists. His arms, sinewed and wiry and nearly as scarred as his chest, his back, his neck. Somehow he'd gotten fresh scars, small slices out of his shoulder, over the line of his collar bone. An ugly gash started at his side and slid down his hip bone before vanishing out of sight under his baji - it didn't look particularly new, but Yong Ha felt like he would have remembered that one.

Wordlessly, Yong Ha reached out and wrapped his hands around Jae Shin's shoulders. Took a small step forward. Silently, sweetly, laid his lips on one of the scars over Jae Shin's collar bone. On the place where a blade had cut right where his shoulder met his neck. At his throat, the place where he'd been nicked at the jugular and nearly bled out in the street.

"Don't scare me anymore," Yong Ha whispered into Jae Shin's neck. "Don't leave me behind anymore. Don't be stupid anymore."

"I can't promise that," Jae Shin sighed back. Put a hand under Yong Ha's chin. Pulled his face up gently. "What about this isn't stupid?" And kissed him.

It was like - it wasn't like anything else at all, not ever. There had never been anything like this since the dawn of creation. Yong Ha had thought about this, dreamed about this, but nothing came close. He groaned and leaned in, tilting his head, opening his mouth just a little. One of Jae Shin's hands was on the back of his neck, the other at the small of his back, and god, god, was he just dreaming again? Had he caught a fever? Was he even now asleep and alone in his tiny apartment in Kim Man Deok's mercantile compound?

"This is dangerous," Yong Ha breathed.

"I've done dangerous things before," Jae Shin said, and found the knot of Yong Ha's belt at his waist.

"You have more to lose now," Yong Ha said.

"I'm only worried about losing one thing," Jae Shin said, and dropped the belt to the floor before fumbling with the ties at Yong Ha's side that held his hanbok closed. "Your clothes are still wet."

And then Jae Shin paused, pulled away, and Yong Ha was left blinking and gasping like a fish pulled from the water. "What? What?" Jae Shin's hands were still on him but his mouth wasn't, and hadn't they only just gotten started?

Jae Shin colored and looked away. Yong Ha's jaw dropped. "You've never done this before," Yong Ha said, and it wasn't a question. "I'm an idiot. You've never done this before."

It was Jae Shin's turn to look shocked. "I've...! I've done... okay, so I haven't... but -"

"Don't," Yong Ha interrupted, bringing his hand up to Jae Shin's jawline. "Do you really think you can lie to me? About this?"

"I was sort of hoping," Jae Shin mumbled, flinching just a little and flashing a quick, nervous half smile, his eyes flickering.

Gu Yong Ha looked at him. Really looked at him, willing his heartbeat to slow, willing his breath back down into his lungs. Moon Jae Shin was nervous, beyond nervous, and maybe just a little cold - his skin was slick with rain still, and every muscle seemed ready to run. "Idiot," he sighed. "I'm Gu Yong Ha."

And he would have pulled away then if Jae Shin had let him, but the hand at the small of his back stayed firm. "Don't leave me behind anymore," Jae Shin said, using his own words against him, the bastard. He swallowed (and the movement of his throat was so close to Yong Ha's face that he couldn't ignore it). "Look, I know I... I know that I don't know. How to do this, any of this. But I know that - I know -" He reached up haltingly with one hand and slowly, slowly pulled Yong Ha's manggeon back and off his forehead. "- I know that I want to be here."

Yong Ha just looked at him, his breathing still hard. Somewhere in the back of his head Jae Shin recognized that he was cold, that he wasn't wearing anything on his top half, but inside he felt like embers, hot and red, and Yong Ha's body in his arms was like - it was like - it was right. It was right, that was all. He didn't want to be anywhere else. He wanted to be here. He wanted - but he drew a blank even as his head buzzed and his arms tightened around Yong Ha's ribs.

"Are you sure?" The words came out of Yong Ha's mouth in a whisper.

"I'm sure." Jae Shin's hands pushed through the layers, found his skin. "You're dripping on the floor." Ran his hands up and over Yong Ha's chest until the robes slipped off his shoulders. (He hadn't spent as much time in the rain as Jae Shin had and his clothes weren't as wet, but water still splattered up and over them when the soaked fabric hit the floor.) Then he just stood there for a minute, hands on Yong Ha's shoulders.

Yong Ha watched him, trying not to feel self conscious as Jae Shin looked at him. Resisted the urge to wrap his arms protectively over his chest. "It's all right, we can just -"

"I've never done this before," Jae Shin interrupted, looking up quickly. There was that look of fear again, but now it was outweighed by that same white-knuckled courage he'd shown before. "What do I do?"

The strength of Jae Shin's grip on his shoulders might have hurt if he'd been paying attention, but he wasn't. He could only focus on the look on Jae Shin's face. The line of his jaw. The way the muscles of his shoulders sloped just so. The way in which all those old wounds, ugly and twisted, seemed to lead the eye down, down, down. He could only focus on Jae Shin, so he stopped trying not to and reached out instead. "Tell me when to stop."


	9. The Lovers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter. This took much longer to finish up than I expected because halfway through chapter 6 I started pre-emptively missing writing these two jerks and started another story about them on top of this one, so if you're interested in more of my weirdo blathering then just give me a couple weeks - I'm 15,000 words into a modern day AU that involves the army, a French bakery, and more weird limericks than you can shake a stick at.

Moon Jae Shin opened his eyes.

The light filtering through the rice paper windows arced low. Late afternoon. It was bright, though - the storm had come and gone, taking the darkness with it. He could hear people talking outside, the sound of waves hitting the shore, a low wind whistling through the small space between the window and its frame. He took a slow breath. Rolled over on his side.

Gu Yong Ha sighed sleepily and moved into him, arms curling over his side and forehead nuzzling into the place where his shoulder met his neck. Jae Shin closed his eyes and bent his head until he was resting his cheek just above Yong Ha's temple. "It's getting late," he murmured into Yong Ha's ear. "The day got away from us."

Yong Ha just sighed again and moved in closer, pressing the bare skin of his chest against Jae Shin's. His hair had mostly come out of its top knot and had gotten tangled. "The day went just where I wanted," he mumbled back. "Very obedient. Now shh... I'm sleeping."

"Really? You've never talked in your sleep before."

"I'm trying all kinds of new things today."

Jae Shin flushed hot and he glanced down at the man in his arms. "That was new to you?"

Yong Ha responded by pinching him viciously in the soft skin of his waist. "Yes it was new, you asshole. You think I'd have done that with anyone else?"

"I just figured you..." Jae Shin grimaced, rubbing at the spot where Yong Ha had attacked. It was going to bruise, he could already tell. "I just figured you knew what you were doing."

Yong Ha took a deep breath and rolled over on his back, staring up at the ceiling for a moment before propping himself up on one elbow. "I meant what I said, you know," he said, looking down at Jae Shin. His face was smooth, unreadable. "This is dangerous."

Jae Shin blinked. Licked his lips. Looked up at the ceiling. "I know. You're not the one who's been on trial for homosexuality, remember?"

"Wasn't that just the best day ever," Yong Ha grinned, prodding Jae Shin in the chest. "I guess that trial just came a little soon, right? I didn't expect Ha In Soo to be such a good fortune teller. Do you think he can see the future in general, or just when it helps him act like a piece of shit?"

"Definitely just when it helps him act like a piece of shit," Jae Shin replied, catching Yong Ha's wrist with a lightning-quick hand and, grinning wickedly, pulling him back down onto the sleeping mat next to him, pulling Yong Ha's arm over him, taking full advantage of Yong Ha's lack of balance to plant a kiss at the corner of his mouth. "So what are you going to do about it?"

"About Ha In Soo being a piece of shit?" Yong Ha struggled a little, half-heartedly, but gave up after a second and laid his weight on Jae Shin's ribs instead. Jae Shin wheezed dramatically but stopped when he got whapped on the cheek for his trouble. "I don't think there's anything anyone can do about that. I gave up a long time ago. He's a lost cause."

"I don't mean that." Jae Shin wrapped his arms around Yong Ha and lay still. "I mean about this being dangerous."

"Oh."

Yong Ha rested his head on Jae Shin's chest. The sound of his heart was slow now, not like before when it had sounded almost like the beating of a bird's wings. His skin was warm and his breath was even. Yong Ha closed his eyes. "I don't know if there's anything we can do about it. It's dangerous. That's all."

Jae Shin looked up at the ceiling. "I guess we'll just have to figure it out as we go."

 

* * *

**Fifteen weeks previous**

 

"Hey."

Moon Jae Shin opened his eyes and then instantly regretted this decision. His head rang like a gong. His eyes felt like boiled eggs, still in the pot and doused liberally with hot pepper sauce. His skin was slick with sweat and the air - the air! - it had never really cooled down the night before and now he may as well be roasting in his own juices. He groaned and rolled over, cradling his head in his arms.

Gu Yong Ha kicked him again, a little less gently than before. "Hey, you big lump. We're way past time to clear out of here. I know you're hungover, but you have to get up before I lose my patience or so help me I'll kick you home like a ball."

"Please don't," Moon Jae Shin groaned into the crooks of his elbows. Yong Ha kicked him again in response. "Ow! Fine! Fine! I'm getting up!"

"That's right," Yong Ha said, and turned his attention back to the table, where the fortune telling cards were still scattered amongst the empty bottles and banchan dishes.

Jae Shin sat up slowly, still holding his head in one hand. He opened one eye, just a little, to watch Yong Ha as he picked through the dross of their night of drinking. "You're pretty convincing," he said, his voice scratchy. He waved a hand, still a little drunk and at a loss for words. "The cards. I almost believed you. You could probably do it, you know. Be a fortune teller."

"I'd be terrible," Yong Ha replied, not turning to look at him. "Besides, who wants to learn all the meanings to these things, anyway? Sounds like a waste of time if you ask me."

"Hmm."

Jae Shin struggled up onto his knees and reached under the table for a slim piece of white paper, peering at it curiously. Yong Ha looked up, straightening the stack of cards in his hand. "What's that?"

"You missed one," Jae Shin said simply, holding out the card. "The Lovers."

Yong Ha sighed irritably and reached out to take it - but Jae Shin didn't let go. Yong Ha blinked. Tugged. Looked up at Jae Shin's face, only to find his friend looking at him with the same kind of narrow-eyed curiosity with which he'd looked at the cards the night before. That old forgotten thrill ran down Yong Ha's spine at the look on his face, and he swallowed. "What?"

"What does this one mean?"

"I don't know, it..." Yong Ha trailed off. "I mean, it means lovers, obviously. Like if you draw this card it's predicting something about a relationship with another person. But it also means... choices? Making decisions. Something big, a big decision you'll have to make."

Jae Shin looked down at the card for a minute, then grinned that lopsided smile and let go of it. "It's a good thing you're such a bad fortune teller, then," he said, and stood up unsteadily, patting dust from his clothes. He reached a hand down to help Yong Ha up off the floor. "I've always been bad at making decisions."

Yong Ha looked at the offered hand, then up into Jae Shin's face. "I wouldn't say that," he said, "but who knows if you'd make the right choice?"

"I know a fortune teller," Jae Shin said. "We can ask him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to that guy I married, who loves this show almost as much as I do, and without whom this probably wouldn't have been finished; to my Korean professor, who had us watch Korean dramas to work on our listening comprehension; to NaNoWriMo, for teaching me to write stories more than 2,000 words long.
> 
> Many apologies to everyone who was really hoping to read some sex (or at least sexiness). I wimped out. I'm so easily embarrassed. I couldn't do it. If you want to write that missing scene, you have my blessing. Please send me the link so I can skim it nervously because sexy stuff makes me uncomfortable.


End file.
